Book Description
Groundbreaking essays on the new global economy from an "expert observer" (Forecast). Saskia Sassen is an internationally recognized expert on globalization whose writings have appeared in journals and magazines worldwide. Now available in paperback, Globalization and Its Discontents is a collection of Sassen's essays dealing with topics such as the "global city," gender and migration (reconceived as the globalization of labor), information technology, and the new dynamics of inequality. Sassen brings together cultural and literary studies, feminist theory, political economics, sociology, and political science, showing how vast the chasm between metropolitan business centers and low-income inner cities has become. Incisive and original, she takes on common political, cultural, and economic misconceptions of globalization and offers a thoughtful, provocative new look at our increasingly global society.
Customer Reviews:
brilliant ideas, mediocre writing.......2005-11-08
This is probably as good an introduction to Sassen's work as any, as she covers most of her major ideas with relative brevity. The title is rather misleading (as is the case of Stiglitz's (later published) work of the same name)--she focuses on the dynamics and effects of globalization and does not discuss organized resistance by social movements to it. Sassen sees three macro-level phenomena at work--the hypermobility of capital, the "unbundling" of state sovereignty, and the rise of global cities. It is the last of these ideas for which she is probably best known. She does not really get into an analysis of the hypermobility of capital here, but many other authors have covered that matter. Her analyses of the unbundling of state sovereignty and the rise of global cities are far more original. Against the background of these macro-phenomena, Sassen also analyzes the rise of the service economy, immigration patterns, and the changing roles of women.
I'm not sure how to fairly summarize Sassen's ideas in a brief review. To hit the high points, she argues that as systems of international law grow, the traditional sovereignty of the state is transformed, with its pieces of it being unbundles and some elements being transferred to international organizations, such as the UN and WTO. There are actually two distinct international law regimes--the human rights regime and the more powerful neoliberal regime, enforced by the likes of the WTO and IMF. This neoliberal regime has enabled the rise of the global economy.
Contrary to all the hype about globalization, the internet, and a "dematerialized" economy though, Sassen argues that the politics of place remain as important ever. This brings her to her analysis of global cities. If we are to have the high speed communications created by the internet, we need a physical infrastructure for it, fiber-optic cables and all that--a seemingly obvious point, but one often overlooked. This infrastructure is not evenly distributed either internationally or nationally. It is in fact concentrated in global cities, most of which are, not coincidentally, in the first world. The three chief global cities are, in fact, New York, London, and Tokyo. These global cities are at the heart of the new service sector that is so important to the global economy. As corporations' operations are more globally decentralized, power--control of these operations--has become more centralized in the global cities, which have the telecommunications infrastructure to do all the necessary coordinating of information.
Much of this coordination is in fact outsourced to specialized corporations providing services to the other corporations, in such fields as accounting, insurance and--the truly dominant force in gloablization--finances. These corporations are staffed by a new professional class, which has moved to the city, abondonning the suburbs, demanding upscale services. The downside of this is the shrinking of the traditional middle-class and the old economy based on mass production, mass consumption, and mass prosprity. Instead what is growing is a poor working class of workers providing personal (as opposed to corporate) services (such as house-cleaning, child care, janitorial services, or retail), often to the professionals who work doing corporate services. Thus there is a growing economic divide in the global cities. A disproportionate number of the people working in the poorly paid personal service sector are women and immigrants.
Sassen notes that, not only is globalization responsible for the rise of the poorly paid service sector, but immigration as well. Contrary to popular myths that the best way to stop immigration is to encourage foreign investment in immigrant-sending countries and create jobs there, Sassen actually argues that this creates more immigration, not less. Current patterns of foreign investment tend to exacerbate poverty, not cure it. And by working for foreign companies, workers gain some familiarity with the cultures of the US, Europe and increasingly Japan. This familiarity makes it easier for them to then immigrate to the first world in search of work. And there are a lot of other ideas I'm leaving out.
So, if I think this book is so brilliant, why am I only giving it four stars? Poor writing. As a previous reviewer noted, all the essays in this book were previously published elsewhere. I don't think this makes this book worthless (and therefore worthy of only one star)--it is convenient to have them gathered all in one place--but it does make the book somewhat disjointed and repetitive. But original works by Sassen, such as /Global City/, have the same problem. The fact is, despite her intellectual brilliance, she is a poor writer. Mind you, she is not like some writers, such as Hegel or Baudrillard, who seem to revel in their own incomprehensibility. She can be understood, but her writing is often something of a slog. She needs a good editor or some writing lessons.
Despite that, this book is definitely worth reading if you want to explore in-depth some important, unorthodox ideas about globalization.
Warning: Contents Older than Globalization.......2002-09-29
What purports to be a book on globalization is actually only peripherally about globalization writ large. Sassen is interested in more specific aspects of globalization: its impact on migration (the huge theme of this book), its place-specificity, and its resultant dispersal of powers that used to belong solely to the nation-state. Her points are good, but you don't need this book to get them, since she's made them all elsewhere and ages ago; in brief, the occasional new insights are not worth it.
Sassen's biggest contribution to the theorization of globalization is her attention to the global city, which she posits as a site of the physical infrastructure that enables the more diffuse projections of the world market. In these cities (like New York, L.A., Tokyo, London, Rio, etc.), high-wage, white-collar workers brush against the low-wage, largely immigrant diasporae that keep the global city running; immigrants form blocs that see a certain degree of enfranchisement and force adjustments in transnational immigration law; and globalization marches on. It's interesting stuff, but it's not new. Sassen's own book on "The Global City" scoops these chapters. And that's pretty much true of the rest of the book.
The two chapters on gender and globalization are much more valuable (and more recent) here, as she starts in on what she calls "the unbundling of sovereignty," the appropriation of political punch from nation-states and the relocation of it into the hands of NGOs and the global market. Unfortunately, while she opens up a great area of inquiry, she doesn't take it very far at all, "since the effort here was not to gain closure but to open up an analytic field." As they stand, these chapters are frustratingly suggestive but ultimately not very thorough or useful. Hopefully she'll revisit the theme later.
The stylistic question is a thorny one; several reviewers have already blasted Sassen for the way she writes. She's certainly not the easiest read, and her incessant neologisms are annoying. ("Operationalizing"? Can we not say, "making operational"?) You can fault her for that. But you can't fault her for writing like a sociologist, and that is largely how she writes. It's dry, there are charts and facts and figures, but the prose is economical and fairly clear (fake words aside!).
By and large, though, this isn't a must-read. If you're really interested, check out her books, "The Global City" and "The Mobility of Labor and Capital." They treat the same subjects, but in more useful detail.
Muddled and Confused.......2002-02-21
This book suffers from the kind of obfuscated language that a growing number of scholars seem to be able to get away with. Don't get me wrong: there are some interesting ideas in here. But their rewards do not outweigh the costs of sifting through the jargon-laden prose. The author should take a basic writing course.
Globalization and Its Disappointments.......2000-11-16
I had much hope for this book. I was expecting a work which would shift debates about globalization in a new direction. What we get, on the other hand, is poorly written, badly argued, and repetitive work that offers very little in the way of substantive theory or analysis.
The book is a collection of essays that Sassen has published elsewhere between 1984 and 1997. Except for the introduction, there is no new material here. Furthermore, in many cases the content of one article is reproduced in another article in the book. Rather than reinforcing important arguments, it seems clear that Sassen is trying to get as much mileage possible out of her work. It doesn't work.
The book contains hundreds of endnotes (in many cases they contain the most important information) which should have been incorporated into the text. Furthermore, she offers no conclusion to her analysis and the last chapter itself is quite unsatisfactory.
In short, this book is poorly written, tedious, and unoriginal.
Actually 4 and a Half.......2000-06-13
An excellent overview of the changing conditions of the Global Cities and a fresh look after her excellent book "Global Cities". Especially liked the essays about the concentration of power and wealth in cities like New York, London or Tokyo amid the exploitation of cheap immigrant labor.
Essential fro everybody who's trying to understand the processes that have lead so many to oppose globablization trends the GATT and NAFTA agreements and others that keep changing the worl we live in
Book Description
The Macro Polity provides the first comprehensive model of American politics at the system level. Focusing on the interactions between citizen evaluations and preferences, government activity and policy, and how the combined acts of citizens and governments influence one another over time, it integrates understandings of matters such as economic outcomes, presidential approval, partisanship, elections, and government policy-making into a single model. The book's macro and longitudinal focus makes it possible to directly connect the behaviors of electorate and government.
Customer Reviews:
An important and innovative work.......2007-02-10
This is one of the most interesting and important books on public opinion published in recent years. It is a direct descendant of V. O. Key's wonderful little book, "The Responsible Electorate."
Erikson et al. explore the dynamics related to the "macro polity." Many works on political behavior and public opinion fo0cus on individuals, using survey research results. This book aggregates the survey results to the level of the citizenry at large, and traces changes (and their effects) in the public mind over time. The authors follow the public mind from the Eisenhower through the Clinton years. On the one hand, this is only a limited slice of American history. On the other hand, this is the period (starting with Eisenhower) when we have the most useful survey data.
This is an academic work, and readers need to understand that. To critique this as too academic is to misunderstand the focus and purpose of this work. Nonetheless, even nonacademics can learn a great deal from this work if they persevere.
Studies of individual citizens'' attitudes and behavior are not flattering. Individuals are rather ill-informed, don't have a great deal of accurate knowledge of politics, and express attitudes and opinions that they may not really have. But a study of the "macro polity" yields another picture--of a collective wisdom that is far more astute than the individual level data might suggest. That's a key point of this book (as well as others like Page's and Shapiro's "The Rational Public").
On page xxi, the authors state this explicitly: "It is true that individual Americans have a weak grasp on the essentials of economics and economic policy, and it is also true that Americans, in the aggregate, are highly sensitive to real economic performance." In short, ". . .electorates are not myopic. . . ."
One of the most important aspects of this work is its demonstration that public policy decisions by government actually seem to be affected by changes in aggregate public political views. By examining the relationship between policy decisions by various government entities (Congress, President, Supreme Court, for example), the authors conclude that (page 314)"Public opinion influences public policy."
In an interesting experiment, the authors simulate what would have happened to the public mind, to party control of government, and so on if Jimmy Carter had won re-election in 1980. Chapter 10 is a provocative chapter, exploring "What might have been."
All in all, this is one of the more important and well done volumes focusing on public opinion--and its impact on politics (and the effects of politics on public opinion) in recent years. For academics, a great read. For nonacademics, this may be a tougher read, but it would be well worthwhile to persevere.
Strong Premise Sunk By Tedious Presentation.......2004-02-21
This is a book that deserves to be influential in the field of political science, for both good and bad reasons. The theories presented here deal with macro-level or system-wide trends in American political behavior. If the authors can be believed, there was little previous work done in this area. Instead, political science focused on the behavior of individuals and then tried to aggregate the resulting data into system-wide theories. The evidence indicates that the behavior of the public is not always "the sum of the parts" and there are specific phenomena at play that influence the larger electorate, at the system level. The authors have conducted an impressive amount of research, which probably took years, including macro-level data about voting patterns, partisanship, ideological trends, presidential approval, and public opinion. Their conclusions about the existence of macro-level phenomena are generally believable and supported by the evidence, and their work will probably prove to be groundbreaking in the field.
On the other hand, this book embodies everything that is wrong with the academic side of political science these days. At least the authors will be accepted by their peers who value method more than insight. Here it becomes more important to impress one's peers by piling on endlessly repetitive evidence and trotting out unnecessarily complex statistical equations, all to prop up points that were already made convincingly in prose form. Each chapter in this book makes strong and believable points, but then degenerates into the worst of academic tedium, indicating that the authors chose (or were forced) to please ivory-tower editors and academic committees, rather than people in the outside world who could truly make use of their findings. Hence, we have a book with strong and often illuminating conclusions, sunk by the worst in academic writing and presentation. Next time these authors (and their publishers) choose to release their findings for consumption by the public, they should realize that this audience expects insight, not long-winded theorizing and statistics. [~doomsdayer520~]
Book Description
The central goal of this text is to address all of the fundamental macroeconomic theories and policy issues in the discipline within a compact and highly accessible text. It features a strong focus on instilling a learner's conceptual understanding of the discipline through a wealth of pedagogically sound features designed to teach and reinforce the material. This is the only intermediate macroeconomics text that fully integrates global economics from the very beginning. Additionally, it is also the first and only text on the market to offer a fully-integrated program of accompanying online resources and multimedia tools that enhance a reader's study of macroeconomic theory.
Book Description
The Asian crisis has sparked a thoroughgoing reappraisal of current international financial norms, the policy prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund, and the adequacy of the existing financial architecture. To draw proper policy conclusions from the crisis, however, it is necessary to understand its domestic politics. In this study, political scientist Stephan Haggard focuses on the most seriously affected countries-Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand-while also drawing lessons from those economies, such as Taiwan, that escaped the most severe distress.
Haggard focuses on the political economy of the crisis, emphasizing the longer-run problems of moral hazard and corruption, the politics of crisis management and the political consequences of severe economic downturn. Looking forward, he focuses on two critical policy issues: changes in social safety nets in the crisis countries and efforts at corporate and financial restructuring.
Download Description
The Asian crisis has sparked a thoroughgoing reappraisal of current international financial norms, the policy prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund, and the adequacy of the existing financial architecture. To draw proper policy conclusions from the crisis, however, it is necessary to understand its domestic politics. In this study, political scientist Stephan Haggard focuses on the most seriously affected countries-Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand-while also drawing lessons from those economies, such as Taiwan, that escaped the most severe distress. Haggard focuses on the political economy of the crisis, emphasizing the longer-run problems of moral hazard and corruption, the politics of crisis management and the political consequences of severe economic downturn. Looking forward, he focuses on two critical policy issues: changes in social safety nets in the crisis countries and efforts at corporate and financial restructuring.
Customer Reviews:
Journalistic title from famous scholar.......2001-04-11
Haggard has a good name in East Asia field. but this title disappointed me. it's not that scholarstic but journalistic. what are enumerated on his book is not new or insightful at all to asian specialist. if you have read articles on Asia from FT or Wall Street Journal, The Economist, You should know what I mean. at best this book is no more than enlarged The Economist.
Great Resource.......2001-02-13
This is an excellent resource for both political economics and Asian studies students. Following currency devaluation through the creation of the crisis and its development across the intertwined economies of Southeast Asia. Making rational decisions about Asian markets requires in-depth knowledge of the first fall to avoid the repercussive aftershocks which will continue to follow.
Average customer rating:
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Positive Political Economy: Theory and Evidence
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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ASIN: 0521572150 |
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Positive Political Economy investigates how observed differences in institutions affect political and economic outcomes in various social, economic and political systems. It also examines how the institutions themselves change and develop in response to individual and collective beliefs, preferences and strategies. This volume tackles both monetary and real topics in an integrated way, and represents the first coherent empirical investigation of positive models of political economy.
Book Description
This outstanding text, a follow-up to the authors' award-winning 1982 text, provides a thorough treatment of economic welfare theory and develops a complete theoretical and empirical framework for applied project and policy evaluation. The authors illustrate how this theory can be used to develop policy analysis from both theory and estimation in a variety of areas including: international trade, the economics of technological change, agricultural economics, the economics of information, environmental economics, and the economics of extractive and renewable natural resources. Building on willingness-to-pay (WTP) measures as the foundation for applied welfare economics, the authors develop measures for firms and households where households are viewed as both consumers and owner/sellers of resources. Possibilities are presented for (1) approximating WTP with consumer surplus, (2) measuring WTP exactly subject to errors in existing econometric work, and (3) using duality theory to specify econometric equations consistent with theory.
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Life-Cycle Savings and Public Policy: A Cross-National Study of Six Countries
Manufacturer: Academic Press
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ASIN: 0121098915 |
Book Description
The key to understanding household saving is obtaining appropriate data. Dealing with differences between rich and poor households, for example, or the old and the young, require observation of a large number of households. The focus of this study is to obtain data on many households from a number of different countries and to examine them in a coherent fashion. The hope is that through these observations we can learn about the ways policies affect savings and that other differences among savers can be controlled for, instead of being blamed on "cultural differences
* Features a consistent framework among chapters
* Reaches a harmony between measurement and analysis to compare accurately the resulting data and statistics
* Provides econometric methodology to reveal the way policies affect savings
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Macroeconomics: Theory, Policy, & International Applications
Roger LeRoy Miller , and
David D. VanHoose
Manufacturer: South-Western Pub
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ASIN: 0324007175 |
Book Description
This text provides a sophisticated and comprehensive treatment of intermediate macroeconomic theory. It focuses on helping the reader understand macroeconomic theory and how to apply it to important business, policy, and global issues. Management, policy, and international applications are integrated throughout. In addition, the latest technology tools enhance reader understanding of macroeconomics.
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- Useful Introduction
- Poorly written, Badly Organized and Factually Incomplete
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How Nations Grow Rich: The Case for Free Trade
Melvyn Krauss
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 0195112377 |
Amazon.com
Hoover Institution economist Melvyn Krauss provides an easy-to-understand primer on why international markets serve national economies well. Protectionism in all its forms takes a beating on these pages. Krauss goes after environmentalists who opposed NAFTA, human rights activists worried about child labor, and consumer advocates concerned about safety. Closed economies do not advance any of these interests, says Krauss. His arguments occasionally proceed through straw men (a newspaper column by Anna Quindlen is the centerpiece of one section), but they are sound and persuasive. We all want fair trade, but Krauss shows that we're not likely to get it unless we have free trade first.
Book Description
There can be no doubt, writes economist Melvyn Krauss, that the prosperity of the industrial nations since the Second World War has been due largely to global specialization and interdependence. No one country does all tasks today -- products are designed in one country, produced in another and assembled in a third. The increased standard of living resulting from global specialization in turn has led to the growth of the modern welfare state, including an increased demand for economic security and social measures which guarantee politically-determined minimum consumption standards for citizens. Ironically, says Krauss, as the debate over the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the recently established World Trade Organization demonstrate, today's welfare state has evolved into a protectionist state. U.S. consumer advocates (Ralph Nader) see free trade as a threat to consumerist legislation. U.S. environmentalists (Jerry Brown) see free trade as a threat to environmental legislation. U.S. human rights advocates (Anna Quindlin) see free trade as a threat to human rights abroad. In How Nations Grow Rich, Krauss argues there is no inherent reason why the growth of the welfare state in the Western industrial countries should conflict with free trade that is, there is no inherent reason for the welfare state to be protectionist. Exposing fallacious "welfare state" arguments for protection, Krauss makes a powerful case for free trade in general, and NAFTA in particular, as mechanisms for raising U.S. living standards. Americans are made better off through a reallocation of U.S. productive resources from lower-to-higher productivity uses--from textiles to computers, for example. Moreover, by raising wages in Mexico relative to the U.S., Krauss expects NAFTA to help reduce both legal and illegal immigration. Were states like California to reduce their generous social services and affirmative action programs, labor immigration from Mexico would fall to politically acceptable levels. Krauss' novel insight that migration and foreign trade are alternative means of effectuating international exchange is used in this lively and informative book to shed light on a host of important policy issues. By the very act of restricting textile and apparel imports, the U.S. virtually compels foreign textile workers to migrate to the U.S. The European Union's tariff against East European exports provokes a flood of Eastern workers to Western Europe. In How Nations Grow Rich, Krauss dispatches both traditional and newer arguments for protection with unusual verve and clarity. Addressing the belief that protectionism boosts employment, he points out that import restrictions can destroy U.S. jobs when imposed on materials we use as parts. For example, in 1991, Apple and Toshiba suffered a dramatic increase in their production costs as a result of a 63% tariff on imported Japanese flat-panel display screens. This "protect-America" policy backfired, causing these two mega-companies to move their production facilities abroad. In response to protectionist demands that the U.S. close its markets until Japan reduces its trade barriers against U.S. goods--that trade be fair before it can be free--Krauss points out that in a market economy where consumers are kings, only a consumer-based equity standard is valid. Thus what the "fair trade" protectionist argument really comes down to is the nonsensical proposition that because foreign countries damage their consumers by foolish protectionist measures, equity demands the United States follow suit. This wide-ranging and stimulating book clarifies such important and often inaccessible issues as development policy, foreign aid, trade sanctions, child labor, human rights trade linkages, immigration, European Monetary Union and affirmative action trade policies. How Nations Grow Rich is must reading for anyone concerned with public policy and international economics.
Customer Reviews:
Useful Introduction.......2000-08-27
A reasonable quick introduction to free trade from someone who is obviously much in favour of it. Doesn't go deeply into things and is heavily based on fairly recent US-orientated examples. It appears to be reasonably well researched and the author backs up his points well but the book does not really grip or inspire you.
Poorly written, Badly Organized and Factually Incomplete.......2000-02-04
This book presented an immensly skewed version of the realities of free trade's impacts on global society at large. It glossed over very real arguements against free trade and instead inflated what was obviously a predetermined and subjectively biased agenda in favor of the standard free trade dogma that has become so prevalent in corporatized American thinking. A must read for those who haven't yet read the typical free trade drivel, but a snoozer for those that have begun to see beyond it.
Book Description
South End Press is honored to be publishing the The Real Story Series of Odonian Press. The Real Story Series is based on a simple idea-political books don't have to be boring. This collection of interviews and talks by Noam Chomsky is an ideal introduction to the man the New York Times called "arguably the most important intellectual alive."
In a lively conversational style, Chomsky discusses all the important political issues facing America at the turn of the century. From Central America to the Mideast, from Aristotle to postmodernism, Chomsky argues the cause of democracy and freedom with great clarity and passion. This handsome quartet comes shrink-wrapped in a 4-color case suitable for display.
Includes the titles: Secret Lies and Democracy; The Prosperous Few and Restless Many; What Uncle Sam Really Wants; and The Common Good.
Customer Reviews:
Chomsky as Vile Capitalist Hypocrite, Biting the Hand that Feeds Him.......2006-08-07
Noam Chomsky has thrived greatly in this great country of his, yours, and mine - the United States of America. He has made millions of dollars teaching, lecturing, selling his books, and investing. His world-wide fame in psycholinguistics is well-deserved. His infamy is merited for his lack of loyalty to his own Jewish ethnicity and the U.S., in spite of the fruits he has received by being a citizen of the United States. He has repaid this country in bile with his incredibly biased analysis of American foreign policy. He goes way beyond a balanced multiculturism, when he always ranks the U.S. and Israel as foremost among the terrorist forces in the world now, and even in history. His distrust of any authority, benign or otherwise, is reflected in his dogmatic and unexamined support of the "underdog," even if that underdog is a suicide bomber or a major terrorist organization such as Al Queda or Hezbollah.
Yet since 1955, hypocrite Chomsky has worked for the "overdog" Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which has actively and enthusiastically participated in the development of weapons of War and mass destruction, and continues to this very day.
Chomsky trumps his own potential for gifted analytic objectivity with his simple hatred of the United States and the Jewish State.
If he were not so attached to the freedom of making money, earning the adulation of the American Left, and freedom to express himself, he might be able to give more direct and personal support for our enemies and his friends by taking up residence in North Korea, Iran, or Syria. Let us hope he retires outside of our homeland that he hates so much, the United States of America.
God Bless America, which will continue to give Chomsky the right to speak, teach, and make lots of money.
Rayboy
A mixture of keen analysis and unsubstantiated speculation.......2006-07-04
To gain accurate information on current or historical events is extremely difficult, but has to rank as one of the most important of all human endeavors. One cannot trust the newspapers to give this kind of information, as they, as the author of these works correctly observes, work under the powerful influence of advertising executives. Even more disconcerting though is that both the educational establishment and the historians that work in it frequently, and with great enthusiasm, present historical events according to a particular political viewpoint. Those who crave an accurate understanding of history are thus left to themselves to obtain the needed information.
When doing this it is easy to fall into the trap of imputing intentions to political leaders when there is in fact no way of verifying these intentions. In fact, such verification is even harder than gaining accurate historical information, and therefore should be avoided in historical analysis. Unfortunately the author of these works does this more often than not, and this detracts from the overall case that he attempts to make. It reduces his analysis to mere opinions, and serves only to either anger those who do not share these opinions or make happy those that do.
As an example of this, the author states that surrounding the Policy Planning Study 23 of George Kennan in 1948 was an attempt to "pacify the public." He does not indicate who "the public" is, but readers are apparently supposed to include themselves (is the author himself part of "the public"?). Another example, and even more unsubstantiated, is the author's claim that the Vietnam War emerged from a need for a "service role", i.e. as a source of raw materials for industrial societies. Where is the evidence for this? The author does not give any, and the obtaining of such evidence would be very difficult, requiring years of intense effort with the gathering of documents and countless interviews with government officials, both in the United States, in France, and in Vietnam.
But there are other places in these works where the author needs to clarify himself or present a lot more evidence than he puts down on paper:
1. The author states that every president since World War II deserves to be impeached. He does not elaborate on his reasons for this, but only says there is a "very solid case" for it. Some of them have been "outright" war criminals, he says, or were involved in "serious" war crimes. It would have been helpful if he had given more evidence for these views, so as to compare or rank these presidents according to the scale of their war crimes. A rudimentary classification according to the number of civilians they were culpable in killing might rank Lyndon Johnson as the worst of the presidents due to his actions in Vietnam. Johnson would be followed by Nixon (Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile); Truman (Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Korea); Bush #1 (Iraq War 1, Panama); Bush #2 (Iraq War 2); Reagan (Nicaragua); Eisenhower (Iran, Guatemala); Ford (East Timor); Kennedy (Cuba).
2. The author claims that since 1970, 200, 000 people in Central America were murdered by US-backed forces. Where does he get this figure? And where is the evidence that these forces were supported by the United States? If this support was done under the auspices of national secrecy, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain this evidence. Along these same lines, where is the evidence that supports the author's claim that about 100, 000 people were murdered in South Korea before the Korean War? And his claim that 30, 000 - 40, 000 were killed by US forces in the suppression of a peasant revolt on Cheju island? Other researchers have quoted a figure as high as 80, 000. This objection of course does not mean historical analysis should be reduced to a numerology game of death, but the degree of evil of a government is directly proportional to the number of civilians it is responsible for murdering. An accurate documentation is therefore important, especially for purposes of international law and for meeting out justice to those individuals responsible for these murders. Apparently, and the author should have shed light on this with reliable references, the U.S. Army Advisory Government was the sole legal authority south of the 38 parallel, and therefore were responsible for the conduct of the south Korean Armed Forces. The US government therefore, at least from the standpoint of international law as applied to occupation, should be held liable for these crimes against the people of Cheju Island. And was the uprising really a "Communist" one as reported at the time? Here again the author needs to elaborate in much more detail.
3. The author states that negotiations for $300, 000,000 in business for US companies occurred "secretly" a few weeks after the massacre in Tiananmen Square. How does he know this, given its supposed secrecy? Why is he privy to so much more information than others are?
Many more examples of this occur in these works, and serve to frustrate readers who demand references to historical documents and comprehensive evidence. Opinions are easy to give, but true knowledge takes a gargantuan amount of effort, more then most historians these days are willing to exercise.
Great introduction to Chomsky's Political Thought.......2003-03-24
Recently, he has published several books concerning the threat of international terrorism and America's various involvements in fighting it. Now more than ever, in this period of increased repression, opions like Chomsky's need to be expressed. Noam Chomsky is arguably one of the most important thinkers of the last 100 years (he was voted 9th all time in a recent poll of college professors and academicians, just behind Aristotle).So why have most Americans never heard of him? Read this set of books and the answer will be quite clear. In Europe practically every educated person knows this American philosopher by name, but here in America the rich and powerful would rather that you did not.
In this selection of four accessible volumes, Chomsky exposes the dark side of American history and the forces most often behind it. Backed with incontrovertible facts and extensive research these books systematically detail the crimes of the corporate/military industrial complex in a way accessible to those not yet familiar with his more complex and expanded works. In these volumes Chomsky provides an overview and analysis of the hidden agendas and backroom dealmaking behind everything from NAFTA, Desert Strom, The War on Drugs, Corporate Media Manipulation, our present situation in the Middle East and much, much more.
These books will fill you with sadness, outrage and even hope. But, after reading them your outlook on America will never be the same. This book is not an attack against America and Americans, it is instead a warning against the hidden powers that are attempting to destroy the most basic ideas of freedom itself. In writing these books, he has both provided some much needed historical balance, and provided some suggestions and ideas concerning how we, the average citizens, can achieve real social change. Chomsky also provides a list of resources and info about getting involved with an exhaustive list of organizations that are "working to make the world a better place". In the end, all these books can do is inform and educate, it is up to each individual to do what they can for real social change; a book is only the beginning.
Books:
- Globalization and Its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money
- Has Globalization Gone Too Far?
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Books Index
Books Home
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The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo.
The New Asian Immigration in Los Angeles and Global Restructuring (Asian American History and Culture)
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Between Two Worlds: Mexican Immigrants in the United States (Jaguar Books on Latin America)
Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages
