Politics Archives - Page 4 of 5

Orientalism – Edward Said

Published on February 10, 2008

Cover of Orientalism

Orientalism
Edward Said
396 pages including index
published in 1978

There are some books that I’m sort of ashamed to review, not because the books themselves are so bad but just because I should’ve read them years ago. Orientalism is one such book. Both it and its author are so often namechecked by leftwing bloggers that I felt a slight twinge of embarassement for only reading it now. Also, I don’t know how it is with you, but I’m often wary to read such widely acclaimed books anyway, as there’s something so “Rik the people’s poet” about reading Said, or Chomsky for that matter. It can look poseurish and nobody wants to come over as that.

Nevertheless, Orientalism is a genuinely important book, even now, thirty years after its first publication. It’s main argument — that Asia in general and the Middle East in particular have long been misrepresented in the west as “the Orient”, an exotic world filled with prejudices and cliches in order to serve imperialist goals in the region — may look a bit obvious now, not as radical as it was at first publication, but this is in great part because Orientalism laid out this argument so convincingly first. In fact it had such an impact, that even thirty years onwards there are still people trying to cut it down to size, as a quick Google search shows. It touched a nerve, perhaps not in the least because Said was an outsider to the academic orientalist tradition he was criticising.

President’s Secret Wars – John Prados

Published on December 8, 2007

Cover of Presidents' Secret Wars

Presidents’ Secret Wars
John Prados
480 pages including index
published in 1986

One of the things I’ve been kicking my head against in my other blog is the idea that George Bush and the Republicans are the fount of all evil and if only the Democrats come into power, the United States will once again become a force for good. Anybody with any knowledge of post-WW2 American history knows how wrong that idea is, yet far too many intelligent people still are found of this myth, which manifests itself in things like the idea that John F. Kennedy would’ve stopped the War on Vietnam if he hadn’t been killed. All of this is why more people should read books like this, Presidents’ Secret Wars, which traces the history of America’s CIA initiated secret wars since 1945, up to the eve of the Iran-Contra Scandal. (An updated version has been published since, but the local library only had the original version.) It shows that liberal presidents have been just as guilty as conservative ones in unleashing dirty wars on other countries.

The CIA was created in 1947, as a succesor to the wartime OSS, with its main task being espionage. From the start however it also had a covert action function; not surprising as many of the early CIA officers came from the OSS, which had a long and largely succesful history of covert action against nazi Germany during WW2. 1947 was the year the Cold War officially got started, when it became clear that the enforced wartime alliance of Soviet Russia and the western powers was definately at an end.

Ghost Wars – Steve Coll

Published on December 8, 2007

Cover of Ghost Wars

Ghost Wars
Steve Coll
230 pages
published in 1974

When New York and Washington were under attack on September 11, 2001, it came as a bolt out of the blue, just like that other sneak attack permanently etched in the American psyche, the attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941. The mythology surrounding both attacks would portray the US as innocent victim of cruel, remorseless enemies, but as anybody who paid any attention in the past six years should know by now, the September 11 attacks were in fact blowback, the end result of years, if not decades of bad choices made in America’s foreign policy. In Ghost Wars, Steve Coll describes this hidden history behind the attacks, starting with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 up until September 10, 2001. It makes for fascinating, if depressing reading.

Depressing, because Coll shows you how year after year it seems successive American governments made the wrong choices in Afghanistan. Sometimes these choices were made out of ignorance, sometimes out of indifference, sometimes because other policy concerns were more important. But all those choices helped create Al Quida and eventually would lead to the September 11 attacks. But it’s not just American policies that created the Taliban and Bin Laden; Steve Coll also pays attention to the role Saudi Arabia and Pakistan played in first financing the anti-Soviet Afghan resistance and later supporting various parties in the Afghan civil war that followed the Soviet departure.

Reefer Madness — Eric Schlosser

Published on September 11, 2007Leave a comment

Cover of Reefer Madness

Reefer Madness
Eric Schlosser
310 pages including index
published in 2003

When I think of black markets, I associate them with World War II and occupied Europe; not with modern day America. Yet, as Eric Schlosser shows in Reefer Madness, they are alive and well. America’s underground economy may be as big as ten percent of its Gross Domestic Product, though obviously any estimate of by definition hidden economic activities is bound to be imprecise. Nevertheless, it is clear that there’s a huge hidden economy shadowing the official economy. In Reefer Madness traces three different parts of it: the marijuana trade, porn and illegal labour in Southern California. Schlosser’s intention is to use these examples to illuminate the way in which the underground and official economies are linked and how these underground economies influence the country as a whole.

I don’t think he succeeded completely in turning what are in essence three separate essays into a coherent argument. The three aspects of the underground economy he looks at are not embedded in much of a context, apart from a short foreword and a slightly longer afterword, while the crosslinks between the essays are also missing. In theory Schlosser could’ve provided a good overview of how illegal and semi-illegal industries interact with the socalled official economy, as he has an example of an activity vigerously combatted by government and industry alike (marijuana trade), one that’s officially illegal but which is not just tolerated but to a certain extent encouraged (illegal migrant labour) and one which is now legal but barely condoned though financially enormously succesful (porn). Unfortunately however he remains stuck at a semi-anecdotal level, providing a lot data on each of these fields but without the analysis to match it. On their own the essays are quite good, but the book as a whole therefore doesn’t quite gel.

De Snuffelstaat — Buro Jansen en Janssen

Published on September 11, 2007Leave a comment

Cover of De Snuffelstaat

De Snuffelstaat
Buro Jansen en Janssen
223 pages including index
published in 2002

Buro Jansen en Janssen -named after the bumbling detective duo from the Tintin comics- is a Dutch leftwing collective which has set itself the goal of critically following the various Dutch police forces and intelligence services, as well as commenting on any new legislation that intrudes on civil rights. It was founded in 1984, as a response
to the continuing harassement of leftwing groups as well as the squatters movement by the police and the intelligence services. Since then the buro has gotten a good reputation as a civil liberties watchdog, bringing out publications under its own name as well as supporting journalists writing on these issues and directly helping people caught up in intelligence service or police operations where appropriate.

The Snuffelstaat, best translated as The Snooping State, is one result of the buro’s work, an overview of how the main Dutch intelligence service, originally called the BVD (Binnenlandse Veiligheids Dienst; internal security service), from 2002 onwards the AIVD (Algemene Inlichtingen en Veiligheids Dienst; general intelligence and security service) functions and the impact it has on Dutch politics as well as ordinary Dutch people. The Snuffelstaat is intended as a snapshot of the work of the BVD, its methods, ties to other intelligence services and networks in Holland and abroad and the legislation surrounding the work of the intelligence services in the Netherlands.