July 2008

July 22, 2008 Jonathan Power LONDON – Whoever wins the American presidency in November will come up hard against what former president Dwight Eisenhower described as the “military-industrial complex”. After the military build up of the Bush Administration, which now makes the U.S. armed forces greater in size than all the other militaries of the world added together, the vested interests in the military-industrial complex have never been so formidable. After years of stupendous growth of everything from tanks, to rockets, to aircraft and ships the providers of such do not want to see the upward rise of their business stymied by a new president. They have their ways and their means of influencing any president. A president that tries to cut them down will find himself under a sophisticated public assault from members of Congress with large defence industries in their constituencies, a sizeable section of the press that...

By Jan ObergJuly 7, 2008 If you want all the facts and a wealth of sources to back them up about the incredibly violent and resource-wasting system called market-cum-monopoly capitalism, this is the book you should plough through, require your students in political science and international relations to read and work to have translated to all the world languages. Professor Emeritus Pilisuk and doctoral student Rountree leave no stone unturned in their empirical analysis of the US foreign policy system, global militarism, empire, lies and violence. The stockpiling of evidence against the world’s so-called leading democracy is devastating, their outline of the Western values on which it is based and the “delusional megalomania” we see in practise so crushing that it is difficult, if not impossible, to lay down this book without a deep sigh and a sense of hopelessness. Their honest, meticulous research is the strength of this book...

July 4, 2008 Jonathan Power LONDON – Manioc, cassava, yucca, Ever ‘eard of it? Don’t be shy to say you haven’t. Rice, wheat and soya grab today’s headlines. Conferences are called, politicians opine. There is a general panic about one more major source of inflation. Food shortages have hit the urban areas of the Third World and in some countries provoked food riots. Developing countries “defend” their domestic market with export tariffs on grains. Maybe the solution is not in our stars, our esoteric debates or conference resolutions, but right there – under tropical and subtropical soils. Cassava – to use its most popular name is a half-discovered crop, a woody scrub on the surface, a tuber, six times larger than the potato, beneath. In Nigeria, where it grows in profusion, it is tolerant of drought, adaptable to poor soils and can be stored in the ground. Moreover, it is...