Now this is one funny book review:

The fact that this comparison (between central philosophy and doghouse blather) is so easily made is just one of the reasons why objectivism is a morally bankrupt, dilettantish, and fucking stupid way of thinking. People like it because it is the philosophical equivalent of college: a potentially meaningful but incredibly misused scaffolding that enables people to think, “Bitch, I do what I want.”

Read the rest here.

Early today I completed Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present by Christopher Beckwith. This is going to be a very brief review, but suffice it to say the book was erudite, well-written, insightful and an excellent revision of the tropes and stereo-types pervasive in Eurasian studies to this day. In the last several years I have become intimately familiar with literally thousands of sources, both primary and secondary on the region. If you have a decent foundation on the relevant literature of the period--400BC to roughly the late 18th century AD--and are interested in the area I cannot recommend this book enough. However, if you don't, this is not a good introductory work. It is dense. The arguments can sometimes seem abstruse and arcane. And the narrative is so wide in scope that one should really have taken an introductory course in the region just to keep up. There still is no standard one volume history of what is commonly called, "The Silk Road." This is unfortunate. Beckwith's book helps fill that role for specialists, but one is still, sadly lacking for the rest of us.

Nobel laureate Jose Saramago:

The Bible is a manual of bad morals (which) has a powerful influence on our culture and even our way of life. Without the Bible we would be different, and probably better people

at the at the launch of his new book Cain - an ironic retelling of the Bible story of Cain, Adam and Eve's elder son who kills his brother Abel. AP

A review of Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, we were inundated by hysterical books which purported to give serious analysis of al Qaeda but which instead only added to our confusion – and also to our injudicious responses ever since. Leaderless Jihad was not published until well after the attacks and that is one of the reasons it is perhaps the most thoughtful book on al Qaeda and the social movement associated with it.

Though a psychiatrist, Sageman rejects a psychological approach to understanding terrorists. (A sign of an independent mind, this.) After going through his database of jihadists, he finds no personalty type or traumatic event that makes people heed the call to jihad. Nor does he see social context such as poverty to be helpful. Any such context is hopelessly vague and cannot explain why so many millions of people living in that context do not become terrorists.

Snowball's Chance, a follow-up to Orwell's Animal Farm.

It's many years after the events of Animal Farm. Napoleon and his successor Squealer have both died, and the farm is soldiering on in the hands of Minimus, the pig poet. Snowball comes back and institutes capitalism. This is a good thing. Or is it?

After being exiled from Animal Farm, a contrite Snowball returns insisting that he learned his lesson of excess and abuse of power and will harm no one. He slowly begins his means of taking over through "democratic" processes by promising if elected in charge he will reform the farm so that the animals will have plenty of pie and the stables will be heated and well lighted. No one will want under his enlightened leadership.

OSAMA BIN LADEN'S son Omar first realized the depth of his father's evil when his beloved dogs were taken away and gassed in a chemical warfare experiment, he says in a new memoir { Growing Up Bin Laden. }

Omar also confirms what U.S. officials have long believed - that his father was tipped off to a 1998 U.S. attempt to kill him.

He writes that Bin Laden got a secret communication and fled his Afghan camp two hours before cruise missiles struck it.

He does not identify the source of the tip, which the U.S. suspects was Pakistani intelligence.

Omar's book, "Growing Up Bin Laden," written with his mother, Najwa - the Al Qaeda leader's first wife - describes the ultimate dysfunctional family.

The Bin Ladens lived austerely as their father staked his horrific claim as the world's most wanted man. His son eventually concluded Bin Laden hated his enemies more than he loved his family

Read more: nydailynews

related: OSAMA IN AMERICA: THE FINAL ANSWER - New Yorker

Yeah I've been remiss in posting thoughts as I've skimread my way through the book. But I got to the afterword: Money, Debt and Wealth in the revised 1994 edition and was particularly struck by this paragraph page425:

The logical contradiction between unlimited growth of debt and limited growth of real wealth is translated into a social conflict between the rentier (interest recipient) and worker. The conflict will take the form of debt repudiation. Debt grows at compound interest and, as a purely mathematical quantity, encounters no limits curb its to its growth. Wealth grows for a while at a compound interest, but having a physical dimension, it sooner or later encounters limits to further growth. The positive feedback of compound interest leads to the explosive growth of debt, which is met by counteracting defensive actions of debt repudiation, ie. inflation, bankruptcy, confiscatory taxation, fraud, theft- all of which breed violence.

~by Russ Baker (Posted with the author's kind permission.)

With the Democrats set to break the White House color barrier, the GOP is attempting to crash the party. In the wake of Chip Saltsman’s “Barack the Magic Negro” mini-scandal—in which the aspiring Republican National Committee chairman sent out a music CD with the titular song to fellow Republicans—the GOP is stepping up efforts to stress diversity. A recent front-page article in the New York Times reports that two of the top candidates to become chairman of the Republican Party are African Americans.

In pushing these men forward, the Republican Party is seemingly attempting to shake off the parochial residue of the Bush years, and to share in Obama’s historic accomplishment. But the Republicans are in reality resorting to a tried-and-true W. tactic: the promotion of deeply compromised, often disreputable individuals—a kind of lemon diversity that only highlights their cynicism and contempt for the public.

One of Bush’s closest black friends is the former football player, professional wrestler and prison minister Ernie Ladd, who was put front and center at the 2000 Republican National Convention, and spoke at W.’s inauguration. In 2000, while the debate over the Florida outcome and the disenfranchisement of thousands of black voters there raged on, Ladd declared the election over, and criticized black leaders for “dividing this country.”

More after the jump.

Jan 6

BBC -

The authorities in Angola say they have closed the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo to prevent the spread of the deadly Ebola virus.

Angolan officials said all movement of people from northern Luande Norte province to DR Congo would be stopped.

The outbreak in DR Congo was the first in Africa in several months and the fourth in DR Congo since 1976.

It is believed to have infected at least 40 people of which more than ten have died.

The pictures of vanity and part two of the same article the oxford project.

Like a law of physics, corrupt politics, unshared national wealth and uncontrolled greed combine to produce economic inequality and delusional prosperity. Now comes a book that should have been titled Stolen Wealth. This would have been more consistent with its long subtitle: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back.

In today’s world of economic crashes and calamity it comes to this: Should there be higher taxes on the richest people in society? Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly make a very sound case that considerable research demonstrates that a huge fraction of the success of the wealthiest people results from inherited knowledge that society at large owns. The incredible economic inequality we see today, therefore, is morally unacceptable.

Nov 8 UPDATED 11/14

BBC - India is celebrating the arrival of its Chandrayaan 1 spacecraft at the Moon.

An 817-second burn from the probe's engine on Saturday slowed Chandrayaan sufficiently for it to be captured by the lunar body's gravity.

The craft is now in an 11-hour polar ellipse that goes out to 7,502km from the Moon and comes as close as 504km.

Further brakings will bring the Indian satellite down to a near-circular, 100km orbit from where it can begin its two-year mapping mission.

Launched on 22 October, Chandrayaan is India's first satellite to break away from the Earth's gravitational field and reach the lunar body.

The mission will compile a 3D atlas of the lunar surface and map the distribution of elements and minerals.

Related link: Chandrayaan


Update November 14: “The Chandrayaan-1 team is over the moon”

Reprinted with the kind permission of the author as part of a new feature here at The Agonist sponsored by FSB Associates which will run on Mondays: The FSB Book Club. Full disclosure: absolutely no money is changing hands here. FSB has generously agreed, at my request, to provide us with book excerpts and from time to time interactions and chats with the authors themselves.

~by Orson Scott Card

To:
jpwiggin@gso.nc.pub,
twiggin@uncg.edu
From:
hgraff%educadmin@ifcom.gov

Subj:
When Andrew Returns Home

Dear John Paul and Theresa Wiggin,

You understand that during the recent attempt by the Warsaw Pact to take over the International Fleet, our sole concern at EducAdmin was the safety of the children. Now we are finally able to begin working out the logistics of sending the children home.

We assure you that Andrew will be provided with continuous surveillance and an active bodyguard throughout his transfer from the I.F. to American
government control. We are still negotiating the degree to which the I.F. will continue to provide protection after the transfer.

Every effort is being made by EducAdmin to assure that Andrew will be able to return to the most normal childhood possible. However, I wish your advice about whether he should be retained here in isolation until the conclusion of the inquiries into EducAdmin actions during the late campaign. It is quite likely that testimony will be offered that depicts Andrew and his actions in damaging ways, in order to attack EducAdmin through him (and the other children). Here at IFCom we can keep him from hearing the worst of it; on Earth, no such protection will be possible and it is likelier that he will be called to "testify."

Hyrum
Graff
More after the jump

Reprinted by kind permission of the author, Win McCormack

~by Win McCormack

As related by Serge F. Kovalski in an Oct. 10 article in the New York Times, during the summer of 2007, just before the opening of the Alaska State Fair, Walt Monegan, Alaska’s public safety commissioner, received a call from the director of Gov. Sarah Palin’s Anchorage office regarding state trooper Michael Wooten. It was the latest in a long series of calls he had received on the subject from members of Gov. Palin’s official and unofficial entourages. The import of these calls was that the governor wanted Trooper Wooten removed from his job.

This time the caller said the governor had heard Wooten was going to be on duty at the fair, and she did not want him around when she was there. Wooten had volunteered to be in costume at the fair as the “Safety Bear,” the state troopers’ mascot. Monegan and his top aides thought this fair episode “was yet another example of a fixation that the governor and her husband, Todd, had with Trooper Wooten and the most granular details of his life.” Wooten, of course, had gone through a nasty divorce with Palin’s sister two years previously.

More after the jump.

Reprinted with the kind permission of the author as part of a new feature here at The Agonist sponsored by FSB Associates which will run on Mondays: The FSB Book Club. Full disclosure: absolutely no money is changing hands here. FSB has generously agreed, at my request, to provide us with book excerpts and from time to time interactions and chats with the authors themselves.

by Sumbul Ali-Karamali

A friend of a friend – a physician – declared categorically almost 18 months ago that she could never vote for anyone whose middle name was “Hussein.” In stark contrast, a Jewish friend of mine recently joined a Facebook group of over a thousand participants who have all adopted the middle name, “Hussein.” The purpose of this group, of course, is to protest against the unflagging use of Obama’s middle name as a negative propaganda tool, not to mention as an occasional near-expletive. But I like to think that the Jews and Christians and Muslims and others who are adopting Hussein as a middle name are doing so not only in solidarity with Obama, but with the hundreds of thousands of people worldwide named Hussein, which is, after all, just as common a name as “Joe.”

In his manifesto advocating the middle-name movement, Jeff Hussein Strabone wrote, in February of 2008, “We are all Hussein.” And he’s right. But, loosely speaking, the converse is true, too.

Because plenty of Husseins are American. In fact, plenty of Muslims are Joe-Hussein-the-Plumber average Americans who are being vilified by the very politicians who claim to care so much about average Americans. Those who elevate Joe the Plumber as the symbol of America while simultaneously denigrating Obama for being Hussein miss the point: Obama, along with his American Joe-Hussein-the-Plumber namesakes, are symbols of the greatness of America, too.

More after the jump

~by Bill Murphy Jr.,
reprinted with permission by the author of In A Time of War

A great gulf exists between American military and civilian societies. But paradoxically, it's can be hard to tell young veterans of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from their peers who haven't served. As I wrote a book about West Point recently, I would visit with vets who had left the Army and were attending some of America's most prestigious universities. I was struck that the veterans were often the ones walking around campus with the longest hair, and the most stylish clothes. Spot a guy with a high-and-tight haircut and a wardrobe looking straight out of the AAFES at Fort Bragg -- odds are he's a wannabe who reads too many Tom Clancy novels and never served a day in the military.

Reprinted with the kind permission of the author as part of a new feature here at The Agonist sponsored by FSB Associates which will run on Mondays: The FSB Book Club. Full disclosure: absolutely no money is changing hands here. FSB has generously agreed, at my request, to provide us with book excerpts and from time to time interactions and chats with the authors themselves.

by Sumbul Ali-Karamali

In Ohio, early voting began yesterday. In a seemingly unrelated event, four days ago in Ohio two men sprayed a noxious chemical into the babysitting room at a mosque in Dayton, causing babies and children to suffer burning eyes and throats, and forcing panicked evacuation of the mosque. Two apparently disparate events, perhaps, but they’re unexpectedly connected.

The incident at the mosque occurred at the end of the same week that an anti-Muslim propaganda dvd was distributed by mail in Ohio. Twenty-eight million copies of this same dvd had previously distributed as a paid advertisement in major newspapers in swing states, of which Ohio is one.
Called “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War on the West,” this film has been described as perpetuating anti-Muslim hate speech, characterizing Muslims as followers of a violent religion, and equating Muslims with Nazis (though Muslims are a faith group and Nazis were members of a European state with a standing military). The movie features Islamophobic pundits speaking on behalf of all Muslims.

Bombay | Oct 2

BBC - The US Senate has approved a nuclear deal with India, ending a three-decade ban on US nuclear trade with Delhi.

The 86-13 vote was the last legislative hurdle in a process that began when an agreement was reached in 2005.

The deal will give India access to US civilian nuclear technology and fuel in return for inspections of its civilian, but not military, nuclear facilities.

India says the accord is vital to meet its rising energy needs. Critics say it creates a dangerous precedent.

They say it effectively allows India to expand its nuclear power industry without requiring it to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as other nations must.

Related threads: Senior senator wants quick vote on US-India pact and World Nuclear Trade Group Agrees to Restrict Sales to India

In horribly oppressive theocratic countries, these five remarkable women bust out to find a freedom that many of us in America fear and hide from under the veils of self-imposed constraints. Awake up call to the American fundamentalists who demand more religious based laws and education. Theocracies exist and they often grow into ugly regimes.

The autobiography, entitled Infidel by Ayaan Kirsi Ali, drags gruesome truths out from the shadows of Muslim society that otherwise remain in the darkness of closed circles and communications controlled by Islamic authorities. Ayaan exposes the hidden workings of a backward society gripped tightly in religious fervor.

Clinton was impeached for lying about sex; George Bush is not impeached for deceiving and misleading Americans and manipulating intelligence which has led to the death of over 4000 US soldiers and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.

Although this book arrived on the market over a year ago, surprisingly few reviews appeared and they do so more as opinion essays based on Bacevich’s work, which only testifies to its influence. His book traces the last few decades of American history focusing on changes in public attitudes and government doctrines regarding the use of military might. Bacevich states his position clearly in the introduction of this seminal work.

Ahmed Rashid has good timing. His earlier book, on the Taliban, came out just a year before the September 11th attacks and the subsequent US campaign in Afghanistan. His present offering, a look at the present situation in that country and the region around it, comes as the Taliban is reasserting control over the Pashtun south. Descent into Chaos is an excellent account of events in and around Afghanistan and an equally excellent analysis of the failure of nation building there, the role of Pakistani military intelligence in the region, and the greater context of the longstanding Pakistani-Indian conflict.

Rashid is critical of Western failures to foster the development of a state in Afghanistan – a failure he sees as resulting in instability, warlordism, economic stagnation, and the resurgence of the Taliban. A state with even a moderate amount of articulation and funding, he holds, would be able to integrate disparate tribal and militia leaders into a viable consensual framework. He draws here from his colleague (and my former teacher) Barnett Rubin, who looks upon historical examples. The British gave ample sums of money to Afghan monarchs who craftily dispersed it to build a consensual framework. The Soviet Union did the same, prior to its ill-advised and ill-starred invasion in 1979. If a state is too weak, warlordism develops. Too strong, regional rebellions break out. But a state with adequate funding, usually from foreign sources, that refrains from or cannot achieve too much central control, can govern through consensus.

A review of Alex Abella, Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire. (Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 2008)

Like many people, Alex Abella first learned of the RAND Corporation amid the passions of the Vietnam War, to which the famous think tank contributed many analyses. He realized then that the period was not conducive to a sound assessment of RAND, and the intervening decades have provided him some perspective. His wait has resulted in a fine study of the renowned and reviled think tank on national security matters.

RAND was created shortly after World War Two, mainly by the military, to bring outside expertise to bear on the various new challenges in the post-WW2 world. No one knew what the new technologies such as ballistic missiles and the geopolitical dynamics of facing the Soviet Union would bring, so notable academics and strategic thinkers were assembled, eventually in Santa Monica, to provide counsel. An assembly of bright people had created the atom bomb, a similar assembly would help us face the age the bomb made. Many of RAND’s studies seem off-putting if not horrifying, but such was the US strategic situation of the Cold War.

Anita Singh | London | Jjuly 10

The Telegraph - Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie, has been named the best Booker Prize winner of all time.

The Best of the Booker title was bestowed by public vote, conducted to mark the 40th anniversary of the literary award. Rushdie was always the favourite, chosen from a shortlist of six which included works by JM Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Pat Barker, Peter Carey and JG Farrell.

Since the early 60s, Raymond Federman has been one of the most important American writers. His highly experimental fictions in works that bear such titles as Take It or Leave It, Double or Nothing, and The Twofold Vibrations, he has explored cultural and personal memory, invented intricate narrative strategies, and above all has given readers an experience that exceeds the ordinary. Creating situations that make one really think and really laugh is a tall order for any writer. But Federman did it. He is one of the few writers to truly have achieved this.

One of our contributors at the Atlantic Community, Camelia Elias, has just released a wonderful collection of essays on Raymond Federman. This open source web publication includes four scholarly articles and some previously unpublished texts by Federman. Federman, who just turned 80 is also a blogger.

For more, including links to the free download see, Federman Frenzy. Feel free to leave any comments for Camelia at the link. I'd like to arrange an online discussion with Federman so if anyone else is interested, stop by and let us know.

Hello all,

I’m hoping someone out there could help me. I’m looking for a good book that discusses the global economy – global macroeconomics or international finance. I want to understand the interactions between: international monetary systems; balance of payments; foreign exchange and exchange rates; institutions (world banks); international bond and equity markets; interest rates; etc.

I’ve seen some books on international financial management that look good, but they are usually written from the perspective of how a financial manager of a corporation should navigate this sea. I’m more interested in how it all works and how changes impact the other components of the system. I also would like the book to be quite current, so issues such as emerging economies and current US financial issues are discussed.