Some recent Essays (and other Internet Objects) I found insightful:

• * Kevin P. Phillips, Numbers racket: Why the economy is worse than we know, Harper's Magazine, May 2008.


• * Chris Floyd, Gobblers on Parade: Portrait of a Highly Successful System, Empire Burlesque - Chris Floyd Online, 01 September 2008.


• * William Pfaff, Quagmire, Phase 2: The Invasion of Pakistan, TruthDig.com, 11 September 2008.


• The Falling Land, Empire Burlesque - Chris Floyd Online, 11 September 2008.


• * Katherine Roberts, A Western State of Mind, The New York Times, 13 September 2008.
  (Discusses sociological, economic, and political issues associated with the former frontier states of the western U.S.)


• * A Year of Heavy Losses - Interactive Graphic, The New York Times, 15 September 2008.


• * Dmitry Orlov, Reinventing Collapse, RealitySandwich.com, 15 September 2008.
  (Excerpt of Chapter 2 from Orlov's book Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects, New Society Publishers, June 2008: publisher, Amazon.com.)


• Tariq Ali, Has the U.S. Invasion of Pakistan Begun?; The American War Moves to Pakistan: Bush's War Widens Dangerously, TomDispatch.com, 16 September 2008.


• * Rachel Weiner, Conservatives Turn On McCain-Palin, The Huffington Post, 16 September 2008.
  (Quotes from various conservative political analysts.)


• Robert Creamer, Why the Financial Meltdown Reflects the Fundamental Failure of the Bush-McCain Economic Philosophy, The Huffington Post, 16 September 2008.


• Robert J. Samuelson, Wall Street's Unraveling, The Washington Post, 17 September 2008.


• Paul Jenkins, The Dead Core of McCain's Republican Party, The Huffington Post, 17 September 2008.
  (A concise summary of why McCain and the Republican Party are unfit to rule.)


• Tim Wise, What Privileges Do McCain and Palin Receive Because They're White?, AlterNet.org (via BuzzFlash), 17 September 2008.


• Nouriel Roubini, The transformation of the USA into the USSRA (United Socialist State Republic of America) continues at full speed with the nationalization of AIG, RGE Monitor, 17 September 2008.
  (Describes the "transformation of the USA into a country where there is socialism for the rich, the well connected and Wall Street (i.e. where profits are privatized and losses are socialized).")


• Alan Wolfe, The lying game, Salon.com, 18 September 2008.
  ("Like George W. Bush, McCain and Palin have to lie. Because if they told the truth about their policies, they'd lose the election.")


• Steve Fraser, Wall Street and Washington: How the Rules of the Game Have Changed, TomDispatch.com, 18 September 2008.


• William Pfaff, Reality Catches Up to the Free Market, TruthDig.com, 18 September 2008.


• * Froma Harrop, McCain and the Meltdown, RealClearPolitics.com, 18 September 2008.


• Nouriel Roubini, We need a new HOLC - more than a new RTC or RFC - to provide massive debt relief to the household sector. We need to create the HOME (Home Owners’ Mortgage Enterprise), RGE Monitor, 19 September 2008.


• * John W. Dean, Vice President Dick Cheney's Incredible and Deadly Lie: By Deceiving a Congressional Leader, Cheney Sent Us to War on False Pretenses And Violated the Separation of Powers - as Well as the Criminal Law, FindLaw.com, 19 September 2008.


• Robert Fisk, Why Does the US Think It Can Win in Afghanistan?, CommonDreams.org (via The Independent), 20 September 2008.


• * Hale "Bonddad" Stewart, The Death of Republican Philosophy, The Huffington Post, 21 September 2008.


• * Jared Bernstein, Watching History Unfold, The Huffington Post, 21 September 2008.
  ("You hear that implosion reverberating through financial markets? It's the sound of decades of conservative ideology collapsing.")


• Bruce Fein, Impeachable offenses?, The Washington Times, 23 September 2008.
  (In my view, Bruce Fein is one of the few remaining "conservatives" worthy of respect, an honest constitutionalist. I thought his appearance on Bill Moyers Journal last year excellent: Tough Talk on Impeachment, 13 July 2007. Fein's most recently published book is Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, Palgrave Macmillan, September 2008: publisher, Amazon.com.)


• * Naomi Wolf, Has Sarah Palin Been Picked as the Titular Head of the Coming Police State?, AlterNet.org, 23 September 2008.


• * Chris Floyd, Coming Attractions: War Without End, Amen, Empire Burlesque - Chris Floyd Online, 23 September 2008.


• * Glenn Greenwald, Correction on Sarah Palin, Salon.com, 25 September 2008.


• Andrew J. Bacevich, The Petraeus Doctrine, The Atlantic, October 2008.
  (Note: Bacevich's most recently published book is The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, Metropolitan Books, August 2008: publisher, Amazon.com. Bill Moyers Interviews Andrew J. Bacevich, 15 August 2008. 9/11 Plus Seven, The American Empire Project, 09 September 2008.)

Some recent essays I found insightful:

• Andrew J. Bacevich, Worshiping the Indispensable Nation; 9/11 Plus Seven, TomDispatch.com, 09 September 2008.


• Nouriel Roubini, Comrades Bush, Paulson and Bernanke Welcome You to the USSRA (United Socialist State Republic of America), Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor, 09 September 2008.


• Glenn Greenwald, The government, the media and Afghanistan, Salon.com, 11 September 2008.


• Mark Svenvold, Wind-Power Politics, The New York Times, 12 September 2008.


• Nathan Gardels, Post-Olympic Powershift: The Return of the Middle Kingdom in a Post-American World, The Huffington Post, 12 September 2008.


• Frank Rich, The Palin-Whatshisname Ticket, The New York Times, 13 September 2008.


• Sanford Levinson, The Decider Can Become a Dictator, CommonDreams.org, 14 September 2008.


• Glenn Greenwald, What illegal "things" was the government doing in 2001-2004?, Salon.com, 15 September 2008.


• Nouriel Roubini, The Worst Financial Crisis Since the Great Depression, Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor, 16 September 2008.

Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki, and Paul Buhle.
A People's History of American Empire: A Graphic Adaptation.
New York: Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt and Company, April 2008.

Book information: the publisher; Google Book Search; Amazon.com.

Lawrence Wright.
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, August 2006.

Book information: publisher, Google Book Search, Amazon.com.

Links:

• LawrenceWright.com.


• Lawrence Wright, Wikipedia.


• Lawrence Wright at The New Yorker.


• Conversations with History: Lawrence Wright, 13 November 2006.
  "Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11."
  Harry Kreisler, Institute of International Studies, University of California at Berkeley.
  link to video


• Wright wrote the screenplay for the film The Seige (1998) (IMDb link).


• Steve Coll & Lawrence Wright, The Book Club: New books dissected over e-mail, Slate.com, August 2006.

This book views the rise of political and militant Islamists throught the biographies of a few individuals, focusing mainly on Ayman al-Zawahiri of Egypt and Osama bin Laden of Saudi Arabia. Wright's well written narrative shows these individuals' emergence in their local economic and political contexts, which allows for some exposition on the various local and international strains of Islamist thought (for example: Sayyid Qutb; the Muslim Brotherhood; the Saudi state-sponsored Wahhab sect). The American response is viewed through the career of John P. O'Neill. This personal view of events has its strengths (Wright shows how individuals' political grievances emerge and morph into participation in violent movements); but Wright's book leaves out significant parts of the story (which no one book could cover). There is no mention of U.S. foreign policy towards the Arab world since 1945; no mention of the role of Israel; very indirect mention of the geopolitics of petroleum; no large scale sociological or historical surveys of the various nations; little discussion of the policies and actions of the secret/security/intelligence services of the various nations. That last topic may be well covered by Steve Coll's book Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004). A list of essential books should also include the recent books by Ahmed Rashid: Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia (2000); Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia (2002); Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (2008).

Lawrence Wilkerson (chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell during the first term of the Bush II administration) has spoken out since 2005 on how Cheney and Rumsfeld subverted the statutory national security decision making process in instigating the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Conversations with History - Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson - 03 April 2008.
"Vice President Cheney and America's Response to 911."
Harry Kreisler, Institute of International Studies, University of California at Berkeley.

Evidence that at least the U.S. Army considers the subversion of that process a serious matter (after all, in addition to the millions of Iraqis who have suffered from the ongoing fiasco, so too has the U.S. Army), consider the recent appearance of this Special Edition of Military Review:
"Interagency Reader," [pdf] June 2008.

Howard Zinn.
A Power Governents Cannot Suppress.
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2007.

Book information: publisher, Google Book Search, Amazon.com.

Howard Zinn, Wikipedia.

HowardZinn.org (his website).

Conversations with History - Howard Zinn - 20 April 2001.
"Radical History."
Harry Kreisler, Institute of International Studies, University of California at Berkeley.

Zinn is probably best known for his book A People's History of the United States.
See more about that book at: Wikipedia; Google Book Search; Amazon.com.

Recently, a "graphic adaptation" of A People's History of the United States was published as A People's History of American Empire.
See more about that book at: the publisher; Google Book Search; Amazon.com.

Bob Herbert, Running While Black, The New York Times, 02 August 2008.

It's very refreshing to see a prominant columinist in a prominant newspaper calling out John McCain and the Republican Party on their use of racism. For more on how the Republican Party uses "values" and other nonsense to divert attention from the economic, foreign, and domestic policy issues that really matter in the operation of government, consider the following essays:

Ira Chernus, War Meets Values on Campaign Trail: Will the Big Winner of 2008 Once Again Be a Conservative Culture-Wars Narrative?, TomDispatch.com, 29 July 2008.

Matt Taibbi, McCain Doesn't Have a Prayer, AlterNet.org, 28 July 2008.
(This essay examines McCain's distaste for right wing evangelical Christianity. Overlook the scatalogical humour and you will find Taibbi's analysis very solid.)

Southern strategy, Wikipedia.

Glenn Greenwald published a series of descriptive essays a few weekends ago that deserve thoughtful attention:

• Political harmony v. the rule of law: an easy choice for the political establishment, Salon.com, 19 July 2008;


• The AT&T Convention in Denver, Salon.com, 20 July 2008;


• Rendering public opinion irrelevant, Salon.com, 20 July 2008.

What Greenwald describes are the symptoms and consequences of Oligarchy. He has discussed this problem several times in the past; for example: here. During the time of the Bush/Cheney administration it has become obvious that the absence of a meaningful opposition party in U.S. politics and government is well explained by the existence of oligarchical government.

Political scientists have long been aware of the "Iron Law of Oligarchy", an idea attributed by Robert Michels (see his book Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy), to explain the process whereby control of a single political party (or any large human organization, it seeme to me) is captured by a small group. Further, during the Twentieth Century a system has evolved in the United States in which the two dominant political parties cooperate so that neither party's establishments nor their wealthy supporters suffer from the inconveniences of electoral politics. The rise of this cross-party oligarchical government is a major theme in the work of Walter Karp (read excerpts from Karp's books here).

Others have observed the effects of oligarchical government in the U.S. For example:

Lewis Lapham wrote and acts as a guide to the young and naive in the documentary-style film The American Ruling Class (2005). Lapham serves as the Virgil to a couple of young Dantes as they visit an impressive range of the American high and mighty to put the question to them: Is there an American ruling class? The film has much to recommend it both as a sociological study of the U.S. and as a practical guide to the ambitious on how to position oneself in order to be invited to join the ruling class. Some highlights: The film contains one of the most explicit statements I have ever seen by a member of the ruling class (James A. Baker III) that "might makes right." And Barbara Ehrenreich makes a memorable appearance along with a clever rendition of "Nickel and Dimed" (watch that section of the film here).

The face (and perhaps the color of the face) of the American oligarchy will change with this November's general election, but the oligarchy will remain. Other aspects of the American governing system are Corporatism and Corporatocracy / Plutocracy. (You must learn to name something before you can begin to understand it.)

Frank Rich.
The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth From 9/11 to Katrina.
New York: The Penguin Press, 2006.

Book information: publisher, Google Book Search, Amazon.com.

Frank Rich:

• Frank Rich, Wikipedia.


• Frank Rich at The New York Times.


• Craig Lambert, Reviewing "Reality" - a profile of Frank Rich, Harvard Magazine, March-April 2007.


• Frank Rich, 'The Secret Way to War', The New York Review of Books, Volume 53, Number 6, 06 April 2006.


• Frank Rich, Ideas for Democrats?, The New York Review of Books, Volume 53, Number 16, 19 October 2006.

Book Reviews:

• Ian Buruma, Theater of War, The New York Times, 17 September 2006.


• Christopher Hitchens, Theater of War, Claremont Review of Books, Vol. VII, No. 1, Winter 2006.


• Michael Tomasky, How Democrats Should Talk, The New York Review of Books, Volume 54, Number 9, May 31, 2007.

Video Describing the Bush/Cheney Propaganda Campaigns:
Note: Most or all of these videos are available for viewing for free on the web either at the link below or at Google Video.

• Orwell Rolls in His Grave (2003).


• Why We Fight (2005).


• Buying the War, Bill Moyers' Journal, PBS, 25 April 2007.
  (video link at bottom of webpage)


• Bush's War, Frontline, PBS, 2008.


• Last but not least: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992).
  Although this film preceeded Bush/Cheney by about a decade, the ideas and practices discussed in the film accurately describe how Bush/Cheney and the media have behaved with respect to Iraq, and in hindsight one can see this is how the U.S. government and its media tools have acted throughout much of the 20th century and continue to do so today. In my view the actions of Bush/Cheney and their various enablers (media and both political parties) during the current decade have demonstrated that Chomsky's analysis is largely correct. (Warning: This is a relatively long and dry film that should be seen in 2 or 3 sittings. Less attentive viewers should probably watch Orwell Rolls in His Grave instead.)

Other Books:
There is a large literature on propaganda as a general topic and, in particular, propaganda in U.S. politics and society, where propaganda is pervasive but the people are usually unaware of it. I think this post would be incomplete without some recognition of these facts and thus must contain pointers to surveys and introductions on the topic. On the other hand, I have no expertise in this area and I expect anyone sentient enough to read this blog can figure out by themselves what to read next. So I'll just mention a few names (with a link to one book, usually one of many by the author(s)) that I've noticed are often associated with this topic.

• Lippmann (1922)


• Bernays (1928)


• Ellul (1962)


• Herman & Chomsky (1988; 2002)


• Chomsky (1989)


• Fallows (1996)


• Rampton & Stauber (2003)


• Taylor (2003, 3rd ed.)


• Bagdikian (2004)


• McChesney (2004)


• Jowett & O'Donnell (2005, 4th ed.)


• Bennett (2008, 8th ed.)

Tom Fleming.
Taxi to Tashkent: Two Years with the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan.
www.iUniverse.com, 2007.

Book information: book website, Amazon.com.

Fleming served in Uzbekistan from January 2003 through February 2005. As the subtitle indicates, the book is about his personal experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer: his personal impressions, his travels, and his interactions with Uzbeks, other Peace Corps volunteers, and bureaucrats (Peace Corps and Uzbek). Although Fleming provides small amounts of context of the history, culture, geography, etc. of Uzbekistan, this book is a Peace Corps memoir and not a systematic study of Uzbekistan.

Large scale geopolitical events of last couple decades (collapse of the USSR, economic rise of China, and most especially U.S. (and other nations') corporations' access or lack thereof to the unexploited hydrocarbon resources of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia) have brought this region to the forefront of attention of U.S. policymakers, though the U.S. public is largely ignorant of this (and of the relationship of those geopolitical factors in motivating the ongoing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan). One of the few books I am aware of that directly discusses these issues, expecially the geopolitics of hydrocarbon resources in Central Asia, is Pepe Escobar's Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (2006). A little looking yields some others that sound promising: The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia (2004) by Lutz Kleveman; Uzbekistan and the United States: Authoritarianism, Islamism and Washington's New Security Agenda (2005) by Shahram Akbarzadeh; Central Asia's Second Chance (2005) by Martha Brill Olcott.

[Addendum/correction, 6 Aug 2008: Ahmed Rashid's well known book Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (2000) contains extensive discussion of the politics surrounding Central Asian hydrocarbon resources and Western oil companies' attempts to build pipelines in the region.]

Fleming observes (pages 82-83) that before he left for Uzbekistan there were few books available in the U.S. on the recent history of Uzbekistan and Central Asia; he mentions/recommends the works of Colin Thubron and Peter Hopkirk, but found the Lonely Planet guide to Central Asia "chockfull of misinformation." The problem of that book dearth appears to have improved; see the Amazon.com books associated with those of Kleveman, Akbarzadeh, and Olcott mentioned above.

I think many people interested in Uzbekistan and Central Asia (especially at an introductory level), or in volunteering for the Peace Corps regardless of region, will find this book insightful and worth their time. It is particularly strong in describing the Uzbek people at a personal level.