Current-order

This book will surprise you with its revelations, such as - what do the current and all previous UN Secretary-Generals have in common? All are/were socialists or Marxists (without exception). Here's the straight scoop folks: the UN Charter and the US Constitution are incompatible with each other. Something is going to give. The main difference, as the book points out, is the source of 'rights'. Our Constitution recognizes and protects 'God given' rights. With the UN, rights are not absolute, and subject to any number of provisos. Get this book, read it (it's not too long), and encourage your friends/family to read it too. We needed to get out of the UN 'yesterday'.

After reading this book, I have become encouraged to reach out and educate people of the dangers of the United Nations. Please do likewise!

People in USA and Europe must read this book and start a people movement to stop the madness. Luckily Norway is still out of the European Union, against the "Quisling" ,former Norwegian prime minister: Gro Harlem Brundtland. She is now head of the UN WHO ! Watch out all free and healthy people of the world!

The story of these trappists who died in Algeria in 1996 is a remarkable one that is told very well by the author. It is rare that such a sad event, the kidnapping and decapitation of these good, harmless men can generate such a feeling of hope and optimism. I lost a lot of my prejudices against Muslims reading this book. What a good and hospitable people most of the folk were. I cannot ever forget the reaction of the imams, refusing to condone such a murder, and even suffering death themselves rather than issue fetwas against innocent people. What a wonderful witness to the gospels these men showed. They were good neighbors who didn't deserve this kind of death. But none of the muslim victims of these terrorists deserved it either. The death of the monks brought attention to all the nameless people who had already died. And finally, I cannot read Christian de Cherge's final testiment without crying at the beauty of it: The forgiveness, the fraternal love shown even to his murderer. I will pray with brother Christian that, as he said, one day he and his murderer will meet with forgiveness before God, two good thieves.
Read this book!

This excellent book manages the remarkable task of juggling three important themes at once: the touching personal stories of a community of Trappist monks in Algeria, an uplifting investigation of what it means to be a true Christian and "live the Gospels", and finally an unraveling of the confusing and depressing story of Algeria's civil war. The framework for Kiser's book is the sad and unheard (in the US) story of the kidnapping and subsequent murder of seven Trappist monks in 1996 by a group of Islamic extremists. Using a myriad of French-language sources, including the diaries and journals of several of the monks and their personal letters, as well as interviews with family members and friends, and a trip to the monastery in Algeria, Kiser has crafted an fine work of history.

This history is built on his excellent presentation of contextual material. Clear prose takes the reader through brief histories of the formation of the Cistercian order, the Trappist schism, the history of Christianity in Algeria, French colonialism in Algeria, the Algerian revolution, the disastrous rule of the FLN, the rise of the Islamist movement, and the current civil war. Interwoven is the story of the monastery at Tibhirine in the Atlas Mountains and the friendship between the monks and their Muslim neighbors. Most of the French monks had some personal connection to Algeria (several had done military service there), and all felt that their calling demanded that they live a simple life amongst non-Christians, displaying the power of their faith through good works. Kiser takes a great deal of effort to highlight the areas of common ground between the inclusive Christianity of the monks and the Islam of their neighbors. He is also scrupulous in highlighting how the version of violent Islam that plagues Algeria arose from a combination of economic desperation and the influence of those who fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets and returned with Saudi backing to spread Wahabi Islam. Indeed, as Kiser points out, despite the horrific killings of the last decade, there was never a legitimate fatwa (religious decree) issued condoning the killing of noncombatants. While the story of the monk's deaths is certainly tragic, their tale also contains a definite sense of hope for future reconciliation.

Kiser has written a compelling and inspiring account that humanizes the tragedy of the monks of Tibhirine and of the Algerian civil war more generally. What I find particularly impressive is Kiser's refusal to exploit the subject matter, and his determination to dig below the surface level and take the drama of events to a deeper level. He provides the necessary information to situate the drama of the monks within a much larger context of politics, history, and culture, and finds hope in the midst of suffering. Kiser is aware that there are two rights and too many wrongs in Muslim-Christian relations. He affirms that, by remembering what is _right_ on both sides of the cultural divide, we can find sufficient energy, resolve, and inspiration to build bridges of understanding between two estranged religious and cultural traditions.

I would recommend this book to anyone who shares Kiser's desire to truly _understand_ what has "gone wrong" and what might "go right" in Muslim-Christian relations. If used in an academic classroom environment, Kiser's well-researched and thoughtful prose narrative would provide valuable supplementation to more standard textbook treatment of Muslim-Christian relations and the modern Middle East.

Robert Cox has done a brillant job of taking Political Economy to the next level in this collection of essays. Cox and Sinclair have culled together many of Cox's essays previously published in unaccessible journals. Each essay is prefixed by short bio stetch which very much sets the mood for what follows. Cox's uniqueness lies his open approach to the discipline. Whereas other political theorists have concentrated on the International Political Economy. Cox focuses upon the Global and the forces which go into the making of forms of production, state and world order. Any student interested in the dynamic historical interplay of these structures is well advised to pick up a copy of this book. Although, Cox is a Historical Materialist, he is a Gramscian thus allowing for a greater theoretical openness then some operating in the same paradigm. The essays are meaty and sometimes require reading and re-reading to get into the rthymn. Many are leading to or leading from his seminal book: Power, Production and World Order. Sadly, Cox does not write more.

Robert Cox is one of the most interesting contemporary writers in International Relations. His books always bring a brand new and fresh analysis. This collection of articals represents his great academic carrer and certainly points new directions to the study of the discipline. This book is highly recommended to all students of IR theory.

A great collection exploring international relations and the development of the modern world! The various chapters of the book are divided by authors whom are all reputable scholars - provides great insight as to the various viewpoints on the developing world and juxtaposes the different theories of important authors. All in all, a must-read for international relations majors.

One of the best collections in international relations in recent years. The book covers a lot of theoretical and empirical ground and opens up new ideas for debate. A must read for students and practitioners of international relations.

I read this after reading Road to Serfdom. It's obviously a denser work, though relatively short. Still, the pages come across not so much as theory as just common sense put into more complex language so the academia nuts might be able to understand it also.

Hayek's classical book is against the totalitarians and their thought about legislation. He responses them saying that the legislation is not the tool to reconstruct the people and the economical relationships between them, but it is the method to explain the irrationally and naturally developping law more clearly. Additionally he argues the cartesian method of thinking because of its results which refuse the social evolution. Therefore Hayek finds the philosophical base of totalitarian thought in the belief that "we can create the welfare with law, if we arrange it logically". That's why he calls every kind of totalitarian thought as "constructive cartesian rationalism", because all of them want to reform the whole world, law and order from the beginning to realize their specific outcome like in DesCartes' method. (I think that it's the same as "the social engineer" description of Sir Karl Popper.)

Walter Dorn has assembled an insightful and provocative set of essays that offers a convincing portrait of current problems of world order (and disorder). The volume presents a balance sheet of the political, institutional, cultural and spiritual capacities needed to address those problems. For readers in search of a striking combination of social science and spiritual vision, this is it. - Michael Doyle, Director, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, author of Ways of War and Peace

"World Order for a New Millennium" is a rare effort to link the practical concerns of global governance with spiritual insights from many of the world's major religions. The editor, Walter Dorn, brings to bear his considerable experience as a technical and political consultant to the United Nations to identify key problems facing the international system at the dawn of a new millennium. The contributors to this volume argue that formal or legal mechanisms for maintaining peace are inadequate to the task, unless they are informed by cultural and spiritual values that accord a high priority to justice as well as stability. This is an important argument that introduces a welcome moral dimension into debates about the future of global order. - Matthew Evangelista, Professor of Government, Cornell University

Two Tiers or Two Speeds? is a useful collection of ten essays edited by James Sperling, professor of political science at the University of Akron, Ohio. Like Building a Bigger Europe by Smith and Timmins (2000), this book also fills a significant gap in the scholarly literature on the dual enlargement processes of the EU and NATO. They agree with Smith and Timmins that both EU and NATO enlargement are necessary to build a viable European security community. While both the EU and NATO have their origins in the cold war, the disappearance of the Soviet threat in the 1990s in no way undermined the cohesion and purpose of these institutions, as John Mearsheimer and other political scientists predicted a decade ago, Sperling notes. He emphasizes that the original purpose of the EU and NATO was to contain Germany and Russia. Even in the late 1990s, according to the author: 1) Russia still had the ability to disrupt the European order both economically and militarily: 2) the absence of ideological enmity between Russia and the United States did not alter the balance of nuclear power substantially, nor did it reduce German power in Central Europe. Therefore, "if nothing else the EU and NATO will retain the residual function of containment into the third millennium" (p. 4).
Like Smith and Timmins, Sperling stresses that the EU is an economic and political entity, whereas NATO is a military machine. He somewhat dourly concludes that "EU enlargement will remain a tortuous process with an uncertain outcome owing to an array of institutional, financial, and political liabilities of the accession states and constraints within the EU (p. x)." In contrast, NATO enlargement has been "a relatively swift and painless process because there have been no compelling reasons not to proceed" (page x). In this way, Sperling takes a more optimistic view than Smith and Timmins of the expansion of NATO and its post-Cold War military achievements.
The book is evenly divided---four essays on NATO and four on the EU. The contributors include: Erik Jones (University of Nottingham), Thomas-Durrell Young (Naval Postgraduate School), Emil J. Kirchner (University of Essex), Gale A. Mattox (U.S. Naval Academy), Daniel Whiteneck (Towson University), Michael Huelshoff (University of New Orleans), Clay Clemens (College of William and Mary), and others.
---Reviewed by Dr. Johanna Granville, Stanford University

This book should be on the desk of every policymaker ! As a deacon in the Roman Catholic Church I would also hope that deacons, animators of justice and peace in the local Church, would read and ponder this difficult and complex problem. After 20 years of my own study of the problem of war and peace in the nuclear age, with the end of the Cold War, there seemed to have emerged more questions than answers for myself and others.

This collection of essays gives the reader insight into the multilayered complexity of what to do with nuclear weapons, how useful are they, and what can we do to get rid of them in the future. I was impressed by the depth of the essays from each of the contributors, even when I disagreed with some of the assumptions or conclusions. This book forces one to wrestle with the unfinished agenda of human survival and thrival. As a Christian theologian, the ethical argument opposing nuclear weapons forces one to grapple with the complexity of this issue as an act of love. It is a struggle directed to understanding this seemingly unsolvable problem and the possibilities for living in a more just and peaceful world. This cannot be accomplished without knowing something of the world and problem of nuclear weapons. This book offers a superb overview of this most important and vexing dilemma at this time in human history. We cannot hope to secure some level of peace and justice without study and discussion of the emerging constellation of problems and developments surrounding this issue. This book helps us to understand.

As a result of 9/11 foreign policy is hot. The popularity of intelligent academic like books dedicated to the subject has soared. The American public seems finally to have caught up an insatiable thirst of knowledge for this esoteric subject. This is undeniably a very good thing. And, this book from Robert Cooper is an excellent tonic to quench this thirst for knowledge. Cooper is an excellent writer. His lively style renders his book easy to read. Also, he is so erudite on his subject matter that the amount of information and knowledge he shares within this relatively short book is truly remarkable.

The core of the book is based on two essays Cooper wrote several years ago. The first one "The Condition of the World" originally written in 1996 is somewhat the better structured of the two. It develops a powerful foreign policy model by grouping nations into three categories.

The first category consists of "pre-modern states." These are completely dysfunctional. They are typically broke, can't deliver any social services effectively, and the government's authority is often challenged by gangs, warlords, and other outlaws. Many African countries come to mind.

The second category consists of "modern states." These are you regular sovereign nations working perfectly well on most counts. This is Australia, Japan, Canada, you name it.

The third category consists of "post-modern states." This essentially describes the European Union, whereby a group of countries have agreed to relinquish some of their respective sovereign rights to a supranational political entity (EU) for the greater good of the respective community of countries. In Cooper's views this category is obviously the higher political life form. And, the other two "states" consist simply of sequential stepping stones towards this most evolved state. This is obviously a questionable assumption. Where Cooper sees the benefit of multilateralism, cooperation, free flowing trade within the EU. Someone else could just as well see excessive bureaucracy, an extra layer of government, analysis-paralysis devoid of any effective foreign policy, and a trading block that actually reduces trade opportunity within a truly freer trade framework (WTO). However, Cooper makes his case extremely well. He is a formidable debater and does make a convincing case for his political framework and the superiority of the EU post-modern states structure.

Cooper somehow struggles a bit with the hegemonic status of the U.S. He concedes that the U.S. stands "outside and above" the post-modern structure. He also accepts that the world does indeed benefit from the U.S. protection umbrella. Without a strong leader setting a set of rules and examples, the world could easily fall into chaos of competing power blocks vying for the top spot. Thus, Cooper unlike many authors on the subject, finds himself both espousing European multilateralism and the American unilateralism.

His second essay, encapsulated within this book, has a much different overtone. Its vision is a lot darker. It reflects on a world becoming more dangerous, more uncertain, less manageable. He believes humanitarian and military interventions in collapsing states will become maybe more frequent and more urgent. Counter-terrorism will become potentially a permanent endeavor. Government efforts to hunt down and grab WMD from the wrong hands will also be a long term effort. His second essay, in style and vision, resembles a lot the excellent books written on the same subject by Robert Kaplan (The Coming Anarchy comes to mind).

In the end, this book may raises more issues, questions, and concerns than it answers. I think there lies his great merit. Contrary to many other authors who seem to know best about something as liquid and complex as foreign policy, Cooper's humbler attitude is refreshing. He does not have the ready solution to all the world's problems. But, he sure diagnoses these problems very skillfully. He also asks the right questions and raises the correct concerns. Finally, he also suggests the rather radical idea that European multilateralism and American unilateralism can cohabitate the Western World. They don't have to compete with each other.

As the Catholic Church is again rocked by priest sexual abuse scandal in 2002 and the situation has now become explosive as a result of the absolutely intolerable (yet not surprising) arrogance of some members of the clerical hierarchy, this is an excellent book to gain perspective by.

Michael Harris documents the story of the Newfoundland Orphanage, Mount Cashel, and the Irish Catholic Brothers who abused countless numbers of their charges -- without reprove -- for at least a twenty year period from the 1970's onward, While reports first were made in the mid-seventies and attempts were made to take legal actions as abuse became known, the Brothers enjoyed the protections of the blind-eyed legal system and members of the Catholic faithful that had set them on a pedestal. Charges were quashed over and over and police reports were re-written lest the "powerful Church" become alienated in Newfoundland.

At the same time in the U.S., cases were becoming public at an unpredented rate charging members of the Roman Catholic Clergy with an epidemic of sexual abuse allegations.

As a result of this last wave of Clergy Sexual Abuse, the Catholic Church promised change. Reporting and investigation polices were established to be certain that there was never again such an arrogant denial and insensitivity when cases came to light. The late Cardinal Joseph Bernandin even subjected himself to the scrutiny of the review policies that he had set in place in his own Archdiocese when he was falsely accused of sexual abuse. He was innocent, yet he felt that he had committed his diocese to the new policies and he must be an example of how they are to be practiced. Bernardin was highly praised for his humility and his willingness to "practice what he had preached."

Yet now again in 2002, we find that some Bishops and Cardinals were only paying lip service to the policies that had been set in place over a decade ago.

Among the worst offenders, the esteemed Cardinal Archbishop of Boston who continued to systematically practice denial, obfuscation and who continued to demonstrate little regard for the victims of priestly abuse in his Archdiocese. From Boston a new wave of explosions arose across the country and in other nations. We await the outcome.

At this point American Catholics are found to be far less forgiving than they were a decade ago.

When and how will this arrogance end? A re-reading of Michael Harris' book (or perhaps a first reading) along with Jason Berry's book, "Lead Us Not Into Temptation" might be required assignments for every Catholic leader in the Church (including the Pope!). Perhaps some eyeopening reading -- along with personal liability and true consequences for failure to report abuse -- might be a good first steps.

At the very top of any priorities must be the interests of the victims of these crimes. They have been repeatedly abused, as children, and have been again as adults, when seeking action for what they were made to suffer only to suffer attempts to make them out to be unfairthful liars.

As proud and historically significant as the Catholic Church had been, the time for true and profound changes is now -- not a century from now!

These decisions can no longer be optional, nor can they be subjected to the whim of the Pope -- or any of the other members of the official Catholic hierarchy. The Catholic laity must be heard! And, it is doubtful that this time they will be too quick to be content with efforts to cease the discussion!

Harris' book is an important part of the canon of excellent books on Religious Abuse in North America. Well written, highly readable and extremely compelling!

i lived through a similar orphanage childhood in artane school dublin city ireland,1949-58.owned ,run by the same religious order,the irish christian brothers.cruel wicked evil beyond my own ability to put into english language.i wish mr harris would make a docu-drama narrative about artane industrial school thank god for courageous journalists and publishers.

Having grown up in newfoundland and being present there while the Mount Cashel scandal came to light and underwent inquiry, I can assure the other reviewers that this book is indeed truthful. The circumstances the book describes are so incredibly shocking that I can readily understand why readers would have skepticism regarding its basis in reality. That just makes the story so much more worth reading.