Wars of the 21st Century: New Threats, New Fears

I finished reading this wonderful, insightul book several hours ago so the intensity of his final chapters still resonate with me. Chapter Seven, The Empire Against Iraq, lays bare the lies and misinformation that the Empire has passed to the world through the media; Ramonet has assembled the facts and at least this juror is convinced of his arguements. I have tried to inform myself of the many strands of the reasons behind Globalization, the Iraq War, Kosovo and the Middle East-to name only four of his eight chapters and I believe the explanations given by him are the best that I have thus far read. I finisheded his book with great admiration for Ignacio Ramonet because he filled in the pieces of a large and extremely important world picture. If you read no other book about the politics of the contempoary world, this should be the book you choose. Other books, as good as they are, do not present the total picture as he does. Of couse his religio-conservative detractors will label him as being "a last century leftist" who has allowed his political blinkers to obscure his thinking. After reading his final chapter, Another World Is Possible, those detractors will have scope for many possible books as well as heated Letters to the Editor as they try to demonize him as a socialist and trivialize his arguments as being outmoded thinking. At the bottom of page 165 he briefly sets forth this programme: fostering fair trade, annulment of most official debt, protection of indigenous minorities, industries forbiddon from deveoping nonsustainable ecological programmes-only a few-there are at least 15 others.. We know that this programme has no chance of being implemented but at least its illumination by Ramonet and others like him mean that not all of the western world has intellectually died from the effects of the conservative mind-wash.

Ramonet's work here is very broad in scope. In one relatively short work, he is able to bring together a vast and sweeping set of information and analysis on current environmental, political, economic and cultural trends in order to piece together their interlockings and formulate a cohesive picture of the state of the world. His information and reasoning are solid, while his analysis is definitively negative and could certainly be accused of pessimism, you will see that Ramonet has every right to be concerned. And we should not shy away from reading this book for its sweeping scope and presentation of highly devastating global trends. If we should not get caught between an indifferent global neo-liberalism that places profit above people and a regressive nationalism that could revive fascist racisms, we must face up. If we should not like to wait and see what ecological crises may be in store for us, we must open our ears to these arguments. If we should prefer to pretend to be happy and content, we can keep our eyes on our tvs and continue to shop mindlessly and not read such works, hoping that others will take care of the world for us and not lead us to disaster. But democracy requires daily work and an ability to take seriously the threatening trends that have emerged. This book is highly recommended, and is unique for its inclusion of ecological matters, as central to its political and economic critique.