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Carey, Alex. 1995. “Taking the Risk
Out of Democracy: Propaganda in the US & Australia” with a forward
by Noam Chomsky
Carey argues that big corporations have used propaganda to make people
‘soft on business’ and to link their perceptions of what is
good for democracy with what is good for big business. This reminds me
of an article I read by Alexander Stille in the New York Times where he
reviews scholarly work on globalization (“Globalization Now, A Sequel
of Sorts” August 11, 2001). One of the most telling analyses comes
from Dani Rodrik at Harvard who says you can have only 2 of the following
3 elements: 1) a high degree of economic integration; 2) sovereign nation-states;
3) mass politics. So for big business to continue its rampage across the
planet, either national sovereignty or real political participation of
the masses has to go.
Rowell, Andrew. 1996. “Green Backlash:
Global Subversion of the Environmental Movement.” Routledge
This book details the processes by which the environmental movement has
been subverted by big business and the right and how it has allowed itself
to be subverted by cooperating with the very industries and politicians
it once aimed to fight. It ends with recommendations for environmentalists
to reinvigorate the movement through returning to grassroots initiatives
and connections.
Smith, Joan. 2002. “Moralities: How
to End the Abuse of Money and Power in the 21st Century.” Penguin
Books
Joan Smith is a British journalist and regular contributor to BBC radio.
In this book, she makes the argument that since capitalism began in the
18th century, there has been a trend to treat morality as a matter of
private sexuality, particularly of women and homosexual men. This has
allowed the powerful to escape moral censure for horrendous human rights
abuses. She argues, using case studies of Clinton-Lewinsky and Pinochet’s
extradition, that this is changing and that we must separate the private
sexual choices of individuals from far more important discussions of public
and global morality. Her final chapter analysing the effects of September
11 in terms of global morality is biting and accurate though doesn’t
effectively tie up the complex argument she presents. This is not a book
for those who aren’t willing to commit a few neurons to following
the plot but it’s worth while if you do…
Palast, Greg. 2003. “The Best Democracy
Money Can Buy.” Penguin Plume NEW!
Greg Palast is an American journalist who works for the Observer in London
– the American Press won’t touch his controversial investigative
reports, more the shame for the American people. This is his new book
which includes his best journalism including stories on the collusion
to rig the 2000 American Presidential elections, the sale of Blair’s
government to Enron and the truth behind IMF strategies for the Third
World. His writing is witty and engaging and I think this is a must read
for anyone trying to interpret the global mess we’re in or trying
to figure out who benefits from it and how. The introduction and first
2 chapters are available as PDF's on Palast’s site: www.gregpalast.com.
(While you’re there, take a peak at some of his other articles)
Stiglitz, Joseph. 2002. “Globalization
and Its Discontents.” Allen Lane, Penguin Books
Joseph Stiglitz worked both in the Clinton administration and in the World
Bank as Chief Economist during the 1990s. He left the Bank as a result
of profound disagreements with Bank policy in 2000. Just in case that
doesn’t make him authority enough, he won the Nobel Prize for Economics
in 2001. He argues clearly and with a great deal of authority that the
Bank, IMF and WTO are creating greater poverty and misery in developing
countries are doing so conscious of their actions. This is a powerful
indictment of the New Global Order and a significant contribution to the
anti-globalization movement… a must read for doubting Thomases or
those wishing to bolster their arguments with convincing insider analysis.
Ellwood, Wayne. 2001. “The No-Nonsense
Guide to Globalization.” New Internationalist, Between the Lines
Wayne Ellwood, a contributor to the New Internationalist Magazine, has
written a concise explanation of what globalization is, what it means
economically around the world and who the main players are. If you are
struggling to figure out where the IMF came from or what caused the Asian
financial collapse, this is the book for you. Even for those familiar
with all the acronyms and their history, this is great pocket reference
with excellent current and historical statistics to back up the anti-globalization
critique.
Yergin, Daniel. 1991. “The Prize:
The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power.” Touchstone Book, Simon
& Schuster
At a whopping 900 pages, this book may seem daunting, but Yergin is an
engaging writer and once you pick this tome up, you’ll find you
can’t put it down – it is not surprising that Yergin got a
Pullitzer for it! The epic quest begins with the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania
in the 1860s, moves through the establishment and dismemberment of Rockefeller’s
Standard Oil Trust and traces the intricacies of global oil political
economy up to the US-Iraq Gulf War. Equal weight is given to developments
on both sides of the Atlantic. Yergin argues convincingly that oil has
been the primary motor behind 20th century geopolitics while maintaining
a balanced perspective. This is a must read if you want to develop a sophisticated
understanding of how the world works in the sadly persistent Hydrocarbon
Age. One only wishes Yergin would write another book to bring us to the
brink of the second US-Iraq Gulf War…
Ferguson, James. 1994. “The Anti-Politics
Machine: ‘Development,’ Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic
Power in Lesotho.” University of Minnesota Press
While this might seem at first glance to be the odd-man out in this list,
Ferguson has made an important contribution to the understanding and critique
of the development process. Taking Lesotho as an example, he proves that
the way the development industry, particularly the World Bank, constructs
the problem of lack of development completely removes politics from the
equation. In other words, a country’s history and economics is rewritten
to exclude and silence any true understanding of the geopolitical processes
that have created its poverty. In this way, development becomes a bureaucratic
problem subject to technical rather than political solutions that never
work thus requiring more technocrats to write more reports and launch
more projects that don’t work and so on and so on… While many
have argued that development doesn’t work, Ferguson demonstrates
why.
Wolf, Eric. 1982. “Europe and the People
Without History.” University of California Press
An oldie but goodie from my favourite anthropologist of the 20th century.
Wolf broke new ground when he wrote this account of world history, not
from the typical perspective of Great White Men, but from that of non-European
peoples and cultures, usually silenced in traditional history books. While
many anthropologists and historians have published more specific histories
to correct this terrible oversight since “Europe,” Wolf’s
book is, to my mind, still the definitive world history text. It’s
as relevant to today’s arguments about globalization as many more
current works since it puts the globalization of the last 50 years into
a 500-year perspective – an essential correction for the presentists
who think it’s all new and shiny and different…
Orwell, George. 1949. “Nineteen Eighty-Four.”
Penguin Books
I know, you had to read this for high school and dissect Winston Smith
as hero/anti-hero… all that aside, if you haven’t read this
book recently, I strongly suggest you give it another look. Orwell is
one of this century’s most brilliant political analysts and, as
it turns out, futurists. He wrote this book as a critique of the direction
he saw English socialism taking after the Second World War but read in
today’s context, it is a brilliant description of the post-9/11
world. You’ll experience chills as passage after passage seems to
be written to describe the Bush administration’s plans for American
World Domination. The real value of the work lies in Orwell’s suggestion
for how to fight back: think for yourself…
Schlosser, Eric. 2001. “Fast Food
Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal.” Harper Collins
Eric Schlosser spent a number of years researching this book and it shows.
From agribusiness to marketing to labour abuses, this book details the
behind-the-scenes operations of fast food outlets and the interest groups
and businesses that support them. The information about how bad the food
is for you is perhaps already well known, but I was shocked by how meat
processing works and how fast food has contributed to a concentration
of ownership of farms. His account of labour practice across these industries
was also eye-opening. Whether you support primarily animal/environmental
rights or human rights, Schlosser makes the case that fast food should
be on your list of boycott targets. Oh, and if you’re a fast food
addict, this book just might give you the will power to break the habit…
Alterman, Eric. 2003. “What Liberal
Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News.” Basic Books
While some are hailing this as the definitive answer to the debate about
whether the media is liberally or conservatively biased, it sounds very
much like a repeat or perhaps an update of Chomsky and Herman’s
work on the same subject (“Manufacturing Consent: The Political
Economy of the Mass Media,” 1988, Pantheon Books) . The arguments
sound familiar too: journalists themselves may be liberal or not but don’t
ultimately control the content of the news which is under the direction
of octopus-like media corporations and advertisers. If this is still in
doubt in the public mind and it takes a rerun of solid arguments and ideas
by another reliable writer/academic to get the point out there, then so
be it – I only hope Alterman pays his intellectual debts. Alterman
promises to add something to the discussion in comparing American and
European news media. If this is the first you’ve heard of the argument,
then get reading and arm yourself against the FoxTV and CNN networks who
are busy selling us a ‘war against evil’ rather than reporting
on the complexity, moral and political – not to mention economic
and social – of a pre-emptive strike in the Middle East…
Blum William. 2000. “Rogue State: A
Guide to the World’s Only Superpower.” Common Courage Press
http://members.aol.com/superogue/homepage.htm
2001 [1995]. “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since
WWII.” Common Courage Press http://members.aol.com/bblum6/American_holocaust.htm
These books really deserve to be read together as they complement each
other perfectly. In “Killing Hope,” Blum runs through a distressingly
long list of American interventions abroad resulting in destabilized or
debilitated democracies, brutal dictatorships and their concomitant mass
killings of civilians. Even if you can recite by heart the list that includes
Chile, Bolivia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Vietnam and of course,
Afghanistan, you will probably want to read this book to know why Australia,
Greece, Costa Rica, Ecuador, the Seychelles, Ghana, Albania and Italy
make the list. In “Rogue State,” Blum tackles the question
of why America gets away with its dirty tricks arguing that it has to
do with American control of information and thus of world conscience.
It includes such satirical chapter headings as “The CIA and Drugs:
Just Say Why Not?” and “Being the World’s Only Superpower
Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry.” Both books can be
ordered directly from the author at the websites listed above. These are
essential reading if you want to understand how Western sponsored ‘freedom
and democracy’ have been lived on the ground around the world since
the Second World War and the coalescence of American hegemony.
Chomsky, Noam. 1992. “What Uncle
Sam Really Wants.” Odonian Press
This list should include everything Chomsky has ever written or will ever
write – so take as given that it does. In this book, he analyses
declassified US government documents and then current events to argue
that the US has never wanted or worked for true democracy and freedom
in the world, it has only ever promoted US business and military interests
(not really too different on the ground). The beauty of Chomsky’s
works are that they are clearly written and extremely well researched.
I think this is an important book because it spells out and demonstrates
with actual cases and quotes that the US worked with Nazis after the war
and suppressed democracy wherever people had the temerity to try it and
most damning of all, that those involved in these activities knew full
well what they were doing and why.
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