Governments

You want to fight but your union's too weak and buddy-buddy with management...everyone sits in their own language groupings in the cafeteria - will people ever get together?...how can we get out of the mess that lay-offs and soaring cutbacks in social services are making of our lives? This book is a fantastic handbook for those of us who want to figure out what step to take next. It isn't an easy recipe for bandaids. It lays out that we have to be worldly-wise strategists who understand that unity forged through struggle is key. The prize: taking political power like working people did in Cuba over 40 years ago. We have to use the tools we have - the unions, for example, exasperating though they may be -- to reach each other and create a political party, a real fighting communist party, that can lead us to help transform all of society. Thought-provoking and concrete. A real treat.

The face of the social class that produces the wealth changed forever in the US thanks to the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s.We work side by side : Black and white and Latino, etc., men and women, immigrant and 'native-born.' This is what scares the daylights out of the big-boss class - the multimillionaire and billionaire families- about affirmative action and other such gains.We spend so much time working, and sweating, and facing the same enemy side by side that stereotypes collapse. If we fight back, we have to be brothers and sisters in action to win. That's why these gains are under such fierce attack.
This is one subject of this book.Another is the birth and survival - yes, even today ! -of the Vietnam Syndrome. Working people know the US government lies as a habit.In our millions we will relearn in all our generations that this government in war or 'peace' serves the superrich.We will be forced to resist, yes, this war, and the next one.Millions will cast off the blinders this society tries to force on us.In the process we will transform our unions into fighting machines for all working people.And change ourselves.
This book is based on the experience of revolutionary socialist industrial workers active in their unions, and in social movements, and against the Empire's wars from the late 70s into the 90s.Any fighter for serious social change today and tommorow : you need to read this book !

"This is a handbook for the generations of workers coming into the factories, mines, and mills - workers who will react to the uncertain life, ceaseless turmoil, and brutality that will accompany the arrival of the twenty-first century. It is a handbook for young people who, in growing numbers, are repelled by the racism, women's inequality, and other intolerable social relations reproduced daily by capitalism on a world scale. It is a book for fighters who sense that this social system, if not replaced, will lead to economic devastation, fascist tyranny, and world war. Above all, it aims to show why only the working class can lead humanity out of the social crisis endemic to capitalism in its decline. It shows how millions of workers, as political resistance grows, will revolutionize themselves, their unions, and all of society" (from the back cover).

Cheng Li does an outstanding job of uncovering the relationships that propel many of China's leaders. Excellent piece of scholarship and the best book I have run across dealing with elite Chinese politics. This is a must read for any person interested in China.

Taking the old "kremlinology" approach to figuring out Chinese politics, this book organizes each leader's factional affiliation by education, geographic location (the "Shanghai clique", etc.) and others. This approach has always been usable only as a general guide to leadership behavior, but it's all we've got. This book does it as well as any other, but a reader should know that it's not written in a narrative style, but rather in a reference format. Highly useful.

I just finished reading this book, and it is truly a first rate piece of China scholarship. It is a must read book for anyone trying to understand the leadership transition currently underway in Beijing. The book is very well written, and very readable. It also is clearly based upon first rate research and analysis. The entire new generation of leadership is discussed, plus more in depth discussions of Hu Jintao, Zeng Qinghong, and Wen Jiabao. Any journalist wanting to understand Chinese politics needs to read this book.

As someone who worked for community development organizations and witnessed the revitalization of downtown Washington, DC over the past decade, I found this book fascinating. It examines the costs -- monetary and otherwise -- of urban blight and renewal. It examines the lives of people living without access to necessities like grocery stores due to safety, economics and other socioeconomic issues.

Such issues are examined at the individual, city and federal level. Success stories like Baltimore and the revitalization of its famous harbor, as well as the costs of Boston's infamous Big Dig are cited.

Anyone who has lived in an urban area anytime since the 1970s wil find this book well worht their time, and get them thinking about the plight of the urban space and its residents.

Paul Grogan and Tony Proscio may be on to something - a completely new urban dynamic that has quietly evolved over the past 20 years or so - largely unnoticed except for those engaged in it. In a lively and entertaining style, the authors tell a remarkable story of four, sometimes discrete, but often coordinated trends that they say hold the promise of the rebirth of the nation's inner city neighborhoods.

The central thesis of "Comeback Cities" is that if lost inner city neighborhoods are to be reclaimed, the residents of those neighborhoods must do it. Until they themselves take responsibility - mainly through the creation of nonprofit community development corporations (CDCs) - nothing else seems to work. But these "engines of reclamation" are not enough - the authors say they need to be coupled with new policing techniques, deregulation of public systems, (i.e., welfare and public housing reform) and educational reforms to reach a "critical mass" and real improvement. Seems unlikely, - but in city after city, - New York, Boston, Cleveland, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Oakland, Houston, - the authors detail the extraordinary results achieved by the confluence of these four new forces.

The central question of course is whether these trends can gain sufficient traction to become the blueprint for reliable inner city revitalization. Or are they simply anecdotal random events, uniquely tied to local circumstance.

This compelling and insightful book examines these new trends and shows, especially in the synergy of their confluence, that meaningful revitalization is not only possible but also predictable. The evidence, skillfully woven into cogent argument, builds chapter on chapter. Without denying the importance of a booming economy or new energy from immigration, the authors make a credible case that but for these new forces - especially the local nonprofit CDCs - the successes they describe would not have been realized. And while they acknowledge the important role of HUD's Community Development Block Grant and HOME programs, and the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, (which provide the "fuel" for these engines), the authors rightly focus on the local nonprofit machinery as necessary for these programs to work. As a 30-year practitioner at the federal level, I can attest to the wisdom of this focus. The best outcomes seem to occur, as is borne out by the book, when the Federal government uses its leverage, instead of prescriptive programs, (e.g., the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, the CRA, FannyMae directed-mortgage commitments and so fourth), and the local level - using this Federal leverage - is free to design and implement appropriate solutions.

The writing is a pleasure: speaking, for example, of the Federal government's role in establishing the practice of "redlining" [excluding large demographic areas from access to mortgages] and the decades later passage of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) [encouraging banks to lend in such areas], the authors comment:

"Consequently, to view the modern mortgage industry as an immaculate offspring of the unfettered private market - one whose dainty virtue was now threatened by an unprecedented federal groping [the CRA] - was disingenuousness raised to the level of parody. Perfect, in other words, for a congressional debate."

So fluid is the writing that one is barely aware of all the information actually coming off the page. Surprising nuggets, simple but powerful, are so easily told their significance might not be immediately appreciated. Just two of many examples: that poverty needn't be inexorably associated with disorder and slum conditions, - as demonstrated by the South Bronx story - deserves serious reflection. As does the lesson of how taking care of little things - like people jumping the fare stiles in the NY subway system - can pay major dividends:

"Collaring 'petty' offenders suddenly led to a harvest of arrests of serious criminals. One out of ten fare beaters turned out to be wanted on a felony warrant, and many others were carrying illegal firearms. In one stroke, Bratton had not only eliminated an appalling spectacle that was frightening the public and costing the transit system tens of millions in lost revenues annually, he was bagging large numbers of wanted felons in the bargain. As a billiard player would say, a three cushion shot. Crime in the subways fell off a cliff. Between 1990 and 1994 felonies dropped 75%, robberies by 64 percent."

But cities are complex entities, even "organic," and if there is any criticism, it may be that the writing is so clear and easy that some may think it belies an extraordinary energy required of these local citizens and officials to achieve these hard won victories. This would be a mistake. Certainly, effort and energy are required, but perhaps one of the lessons of this book, to put it simply, is that things go much easier with the right approach. In fact, no matter the energy expended, they might not "go" at all without it. This book is about the right approach.

Comeback Cities is superbly crafted. And, while optimistic, it is by no means a Pollyannaish book about the elimination of poverty, injustice, and how we can all get along. Speaking from "hands-on" experience the authors describe what they see, and take care not to overstate the case. This is an honest, balanced book that provides a sound basis for hope, with realistic recommendations to multiply the rebirth they document.

"The political challenge for cities and their supporters -and specifically for the next president and Congress-is to draw the national imagination towards the astonishing accomplishments already underway, the pace of those accomplishments, the intelligence that has led them, and the mounting opportunity they will create as they continue to pile up.".

Comeback Cities will fire this imagination. It is well worth the time of anyone interested - even if only remotely- in urban America. It avoids the normally dense "policy wonk stuff" and makes complex issues transparently accessible. It is must reading for academics, policymakers, and the general public.

Paul Grogan and Tony Proscio are definitely on to something.

Though it leaves the reader acutely aware of the problems still facing America's core urban areas, "Comeback Cities" nonetheless instills a wave of optimism in the reader about the revivifying effects that grassroots community development organizations, new techniques of community policing, and deregulation in welfare, public housing and public schools have had in some of the nation's formerly moribund cities.

Grogan and Proscio take an anecdotal approach to their argument, which serves the book well. Where such an approach can sometimes mask a paucity of evidence, these authors have no such problem. Grogan and Proscio show that the phenomena they're discussing are just as visible in Cleveland and Boston as they are in San Francisco and Chicago. And each actual case they cite bolsters the book's argument: that bold, new approaches to age-old urban problems have recusitated patients that most prognosticators long ago said were dead on the operating table. Whether one considers HUD's mid-1990s recasting of the role and form of public housing in Chicago's Cabrini Green, William Bratton's widespread application of the "broken windows" method of community policing in Boston and New York City, or Cleveland Mayor Michael White's and Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist's audacious efforts to make public schooling in their respective cities more accountable, Grogan and Proscio clearly illustrate the key changes that are uplifting cities.

Another fantastic aspect of "Comeback Cities" is the multi-layered, nuanced approach the authors employ. Proscio and Grogan understand, and they make the reader understand, that community policing, community development corporations, economic deregulation, and public school accountability are all interrelated solutions to urban problems. Far too often, politicians and public policy commentators argue that such problems are individual and should be combatted individually and apart from the larger picture. Smartly, these authors show that such an approach is not only no longer possible, but that it may just have contributed to the deep-seated problems affecting cities in the first place.

Finally, the prose of "Comeback Cities" deserves an effusive salute. Where many planning books can be arrid and full of jargon, these authors are careful to boil down their arguments to their essential terms, while providing the appropriate and necessary background. "Comeback Cities" reads like the best journalism, and I must recommend it as one of the finest books I've read in months.

Meyer's book on C&C has caused a sensation in the UK. C&C is now the basis of UK government policy and opinion forming in the media [see this comment from the Independent on Sunday newspaper last 07 12 2003].

"The future of the planet now rests in the hands of three people: President George Bush, President Vladimir Putin - and the unlikely figure of one Aubrey Meyer, a former concert violinist from east London. President Bush has set out to kill the Kyoto Protocol. Despite growing support in the US for addressing climate change, he has spared no effort in stopping it coming into effect. He is putting the screws on President Putin. Under the protocol's rules, it now only needs Russia's ratification to come into force. The signals from Moscow are mixed, but Putin is thought to be waiting to see whether the US or the European governments, who support Kyoto, will come up with the best price.

"And Mr Meyer? He is the still relatively unknown originator of a body that is fast becoming the leading contender in the fight against global warming, after Kyoto. To that end, he has set up the Global Commons Institute. Michael Meacher, the former Environment minister, endorses the plan - dubbed "contraction and convergence" - on page 22. The Royal commission on Environmental Pollution, the World Council of Churches, and African governments have all adopted it. Under the plan, every person on the planet would have the right to emit the same amount of carbon dioxide, which is the main cause of global warming. Each nation would be set quotas, adding up to a figure the world's climate could tolerate. They would be expected to meet them, say by 2050, and could buy and sell parts of them.

"Kyoto must be brought into force: there is no alternative. Then nations should start negotiating bigger cuts in pollution on this equitable basis - worked out in an unprepossessing London flat."

Human-induced climate change is the greatest environmental threat today. Rising to this terrible challenge means overturning the global apartheid between rich and poor. For example, the United States, with a twentieth of the world's population, usurps a quarter of the global atmosphere to dump its pollution. Such inequity motivates this book's author: Aubrey Meyer, a musician who grew up in South Africa. In 1990, Meyer helped found the London-based Global Commons Institute to promote a simple and powerful concept that may yet break the deadlock of climate negotiations.

Simply put, everyone in the world has an equal right to emit greenhouse gas emissions. First, take the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change figure of 60 per cent cuts to stabilise global atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by 2100. Second, calculate the level of pollution each nation should be allowed. The book's eye-catching computer graphics illustrate past emissions and future allocation of emissions by country, achieving per capita equality by 2030. Emissions thereafter fall to reach safe levels by 2100. Climate damage will still result, but disaster should be averted. Global emissions trading of per capita shares will ease transition costs to a zero-emissions lifestyle, Meyer argues.

This 'contraction and convergence' (C&C) framework has gathered the support of a majority of the world's countries, including China and India. It may be the only approach that developing countries are willing to accept. That, in turn, may spur even the US to ratify the Kyoto protocol. However, Meyer warns that the 'sub-global framework' of the protocol with its 'guesswork' of market mechanisms and 'inadequate' cuts 'could prove worse than useless' because the public would be lulled into a false sense of security 'that something is at last being done'. Meyer's argument is powerful, fuelled by compassion for the poor.

The crux of the matter is whether grassroots support for global equity will defeat the powerful elite interests that currently enjoy the status quo. As one US delegate put it: 'We won the Cold War. Contraction & Convergence is Communism'!

Communism or not, accepting C&C would require that the developed world eschews dirty economic growth. If global weather-related damage continues its present trend of doubling every 7 years, then by around 2050 the costs of climate change could exceed the total value of everything that humanity produced over one year. Has global capitalism finally destroyed itself by its own success? Let's hope so.

There is little doubt now - even amongst mainstream political and scientific circles - that climate change poses humankind's greatest ever challenge. "I am not being alarmist," says Meyer. "[But in] the worst case scenario, the survival of all but a tiny minority of the human race comes into question."

This is not simply because of the increasing amounts of CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases that humans are still pumping into the atmosphere, but because the earth's natural regulating systems are themselves in danger of being knocked out of kilter. In a recent model the UK-based Hadley Centre found that warming temperatures would kill tropical rainforests in Brazil - turning vast swathes of Amazonia into desert and grassland, and pouring still more carbon into the atmosphere. Several more 'positive feedbacks' threaten to have just as much of a catastrophic effect.

Yet the solutions which have been proposed so far, like the Kyoto Protocol, have failed to garner world-wide support. This book, which proposes the Contraction and Convergence model as an alternative way to bring down global emissions fairly, could hold the key.

It's really very simple. The Earth's biosphere only has the carrying capacity to absorb a certain amount of carbon per year - and humans have to cut their emissions to a safe level within it. That's 'contraction'. Within this carbon 'budget', every human being on the planet has an equal right to the use of the atmosphere, so countries which emit more than their per-capita fair share must reduce their emissions, whilst those which emit too little are allowed an increase. That's 'convergence'. In a world where 4% of the world's population in the US are able to emit 25% of its CO2, this brings the concept of equity - fairness, basically - to the fore.

For many, equity is a moral standpoint. But it also acts at the level of realpolitik - bringing into the climate process those heavily-populated countries like India and China which are planning to dramatically increase their fossil fuel consumption in the near future. Remember: even if the Kyoto cuts are implemented in full (which they won't be), world carbon emissions are set to increase anyway by some 30% mainly because of the developing world. Why should these countries deny themselves the benefits of electricity, heat and transport simply to support the profligate consumption of rich Europeans, Australians and Americans? In contrast, by recognising these countries' per capita emissions rights, and even allowing them to acquire a tradeable market value, Contraction and Convergence establishes an incentive for clean development.

If you want to know more, read this book. It's an invaluable and readable contribution to a complex - but incredibly important - issue.

Wei Jingsheng is well known as China's leading dissident, but this book also establishes him as one of China's leading intellectuals. He has the courage to see and to say what others in China cannot. His letter to Deng Xiaoping about Tibet is an extraordinarily powerful piece of writing. It is worth buying the book for this alone.

The lack of heroes these days has become a truism. Our political leaders are beset by satyriasis and mendacity. Our sports icons gobble steroids, routinely violate the terms of their parole, and sometimes even behead their wives.

That makes it surprising to encounter a genuine hero, which the author of The Courage To Stand Alone certainly is. It is doubly strange that he should emerge from China, the land of groupthink and hyperconformity. Who would have thought that a child of the Cultural Revolution would become a major force for decency and dignity even as those qualities were being rendered quaint and passe by the rush for market share in the New Global Economy?

When Wei Jingsheng was first put into prison and began writing the letters that make up the bulk of To Stand Alone, Mandela had been in prison for 17 years, Solzhenitsyn had just published Gulag in English, and the concept of dissent was unknown in China. When Wei was released in 1997 and flew to the US after having served 18 years in China's gulag (known there as laogai), Mandela was president of South Africa, Solzhenitsyn had returned to a free Russia, and Deng had transformed China from a socialist police state to a plutocratic police state. With all the stuff in our hardware stores and clothing shops bearing the Made in China tag, you might even think China had been transformed into a free society. You would be mistaken to think that, however. Wei was imprisoned for exercising one of the simplest and most basic rights, that of free speech. He published a magazine. In it, he urged the Chinese Communist Party to honor all the grand promises it made in the constitutions it churned out from time to time, promises like "The People have the right to speak out freely, air views fully, hold great debates, and write dazibao (large character posters posted on walls in public places for all to read)".

Wei had begun his career as a dissident by putting up one such dazibao: his essay "Democracy: The Fifth Modernization". This document (included in To Stand Alone) is a piece of impassioned logic which a Jefferson or Hancock would be proud to sign. He wrote it and posted it the same night on Beijing's Democracy Wall. Unlike the others who posted writings there, Wei left his name and number. That wasn't safe, but Wei believed the Chinese were getting a worldwide reputation for spinelessness, thanks to people like Deng and Lin Biao who, during the reign of Mao Zedong, had taken the craft of brown-nosing and sycophancy to new depths.

In 1979 Deng was just beginning his reign, and many thought he was a new kind of leader, which he was, in some ways. In other ways he was the oldest kind of leader there is: a tyrant. In his magazine, Wei identified him as dictator-in-the-making a full 10 years before Deng ordered the murder of hundreds of students in Tiananmen Square. That prediction put Wei in prison, the special Chinese kind of prison where you are expected to confess your "errors" and "crimes".

There was a certain amount of international pressure on China, so Wei probably could have gotten out early for confessing his "crimes". But he had that thing about backbone, about standing upright for what you believe in. He was, it must be noted, a little stubborn. Actually, more than a little stubborn. Actually, you know nothing about stubborn until you read this book. Picture David Niven going into the oven in Bridge On The River Kwai for insisting on being treated like an officer according to the Geneva Convention. Now picture him doing that every day for 18 years, and you have some idea of what Wei went through. Not an oven, but a box without windows, very little food, very little heat in a region bordering Tibet, no medical care, sleep made impossible, beatings, solitary confinement for months on end...All these measures notwithstanding, Wei would not confess to a crime he had not committed. He wouldn't even get impolite. In his letters from prison, he demands the basic rights he's been stripped of in a tone less harsh than I use on my neighbor's barking dog. Reading these letters one occasionally gets the feeling he's been detained through some silly bureaucratic mix-up. Of course, he wasn't. He was thrown into the largest system of concentration camps that yet exists on the planet, just like millions of his compatriots. He's out now, but the others are still there, doing slave labor, starving, being executed by the score, involuntarily donating their organs to international markets...

When the Chinese Communist Party falls, as all brutal, sadistic regimes inevitably do, this book of letters and one landmark essay will be remembered as one of the chief causes of its demise.

Wei, if you read this, I would urge you to post Democracy: The Fifth Modernization on this site. It's common for authors to put excerpts of their books here, and that essay would be a perfect sample. I doubt the Party will be able to have it removed.

As a Chinese communist party member, I'm supposed to tell a lie as usual, but I have to admit that I really love this book. However, sad stories are always hard to go over again and again, which will make me emotionally unacceptable. If I were a girl, Jingsheng, I would like to be your lover, but never your wife.

This book is a well researched classic on the horrors of the state. Tediously footnoted and well organized, the book offers the concept of the "ratchet effect"- government taking advantage of (sometimes creating) "crisis" as an excuse to dramatically increase government power, and fails to reverse this after the so called emergency passes. Higgs succeeds at proving his hypothesis beyond any doubt with history backed by many, many sources and does this in a way that is both readable and academic. In today's world, few books could be a more relevant warning about government

Robert Higgs presents an interesting and painfully obvious thesis: that government takes advantage of crises in order to grow larger, but then never shrinks to its previous size once the crisis has ended. As a case study, Higgs analyzes the growth of Big Government in the United States - a horrendous story of the degradation of constitutional values and the seemingly inevitable growth of the Leviathan State.

The book is more significant now than ever, since its publication in the 1980s. Government has grown substantially, especially the various "wars" on drugs and terror that have greatly increased the size of government and US government involvement in several aspects of domestic life and foreign affairs.

The scholarship is particularly good - mountains of empirical evidence, all relevant to his thesis, are well documented and presented concisely in this book. The book is straightforward and easy to understand; it should be accessible to economists and intelligent non-economists alike. If you've wanted to understand how government insidiously (or naturally) becomes larger regardless of constitutional constraints, read this book. It might fill you with rage, but maybe you can put that rage to good use. Are the ideas of limited government destined to be considered a failure in the far future, or can leviathan be chained down? If this is all government is about, in the United States or anywhere, do we really want a government at all?

Read this book. Libertarians will consider it a great read and invaluable intellectual ammunition; everyone else should read it, if for nothing else, to better understand the nature of the beast.

As of this writing the president of the United States is prosecuting a war with admirable objectives. But at what cost to American society?

Within weeks of the initiation of the U.S. effort the administration has announced steps that will curtail the civil liberties of citizens and visitors alike, even circumventing the right to proper trial. There appears to be a good chance that U.S. citizens will be required to carry so-called national ID cards.

Higgs explains why this should come as no suprise since war is the grand historical excuse offered by politicians to increase their powers and diminish those of their subjects, whatever the merits of their original objectives. This is one of the essential books in the literature of liberty, and it could not be more pertinent as a siren and antidote to the threat to freedom posed by ever-larger government.

I view this book as two separate endeavours. First, as economic history, and second as economic and political analysis.

In the portion about economic history, Treuherz does a very good job of pointing out the relevant factors that drove each of the crises he talks about. I found it especially useful since, though there is much information on all the 1990s crises, it is not put together in a coherent and orderly manner. As a history of latest emerging markets crises, this book is the best I have seen. There are other good ones about the 1980s debt crises, but this is the best for the 1990s.

As for the economics analysis part of the book, it is filled with comparative information, which I found very useful in helping build a framework that identifies the precursors of crises. He discusses many economic ideas, such as free trade and the benefits of globalization, providing empirical information to back his conclusions. This was quite unique, as much of the economic literature is conceptual rather than empirical.

Overall, this is an outstanding work. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in economic history, crisis management, or just wanting to better understand what happened in the last decade.

I got a great deal out of this book. No one else encapsulates financial crises in the way that Rolf Treuherz does, and I don't know where else so many crises are covered. Treuherz combines conciseness with detail in a way that reflects great judgment. It is interesting to see, from the author's perspective, how many ways there are to drive an economy right off a cliff. This book is really a compendium of other people's nightmares, but they are nightmares that any student of financial crashes and policy foul-ups had better know about.

The author has prepared a most valuable guide for our taking position towards facts that otherwise we might find out too late when arriving at an Emerging Country. It permits the reader to avoid pitfalls, to save time and money upon arrival. Cientists will go into the right direction, economists will seek the right contacts. The common traveler will find options for his preffered activity. Congratulations Dr.Treuherz for the valuable time, profound study and experience writing this book must have cost you. It was well worth it ! Respectfully Klaus Wolfgang Brazil

For a number of years now the U.S. government has abused the extension of allowing Immigrants to enter the United States. 'Crowded Land of Liberty: Solving America's Immigration Crisis' is an excellent book on this subject. Author Dirk Chase Eldredge does a fine job in examining the way pro-immigration enthusiasts extend new waves to unassimilated aliens streaming into the country. We are reminded of clichés that "this is a land of immigrants" only to a degree. The true origin of the founders of the original 13 Colonies were very much alike coming from Christian Europe, especially from British Isles, France and Germany. The flood of third world immigrants with the help of multinational corporation, arrive with very low economic and educational levels. They keep their native languages and take longer to assimilate into American culture and send back wages to their families residing in their home country.

The book examines how the dimensions of immigration growth and how it has contributed to a very serious major crisis facing the United States. The fact that what passes for American has ceased to be American people. Now, America is a state and government, it being a nation is a thing of the past. Even under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 those who sought reduction of immigration made a compromise with opposing forces in a foolish bargain only to create more illegal "chain" immigration and mass amnesty. To eliminate this problem the U.S. government needs to look into these immigration policies and revise the Immigration Act. With this out of control and if they continue at this rate the United States will end in disaster. With the trend in states like California being 52 percent Third World and Texas having 50 percent Third World, it's no doubt what the consequences will be. The future of our children and grandchildren will be very grim. Our only hope is America-first voice to take control of sensible policy. The policy should include an absolute freeze on new immigration, deportation of all illegal aliens in America, no extensions or visas. In order for the United States to correct this it will take a few years to solve it's overpopulation and invasion of mass cultures. It's up to the American people to have the will power to make their politicians to implement a solution.

Crowded Land Of Liberty: Solving America's Immigration Crisis by former Reagan campaign official, banker, entrepreneur, and public policy issues expert Dirk Chase Eldredge is a challenging social commentary for modern times. Eldredge examines America's population boom and how work can be done to improve quality of life for born citizens and naturalized citizens alike. Individual chapters address the pitfalls of assimilation, the essence of asylum and amnesty, and the very real need to balance an influx of people with a broader social service and school base. Crowded Land Of Liberty is highly recommended as a sincere, timely, and thought-provoking treatise on a critically important social issue, especially in a time of increased concerns for public safety, national security, and immigration policies.

This book woke me up to the threat of lax enforcement of immigration laws. The author has punctuated his arguments with convincing data and he proposes realistic solutions to the immigration problem. He shows how Canada has a program that could be a starting model for the US. He seems to have indirectly prophesied the 9/11 event.

This is no political book; it is of serious concern to US citizens.

The Condor Years it's a superb piece of work. It often happens to me that the more I know about an issue, the more I am unsatisfied with what I read about it, because I am able to detect mistakes and inaccuracies. With John Dinges' book, right the opposite happened. Precisely because I am familiar with quite a few of the documents that he is using, I could appreciate how sound and well grounded are each and every statement that he makes, and how thoughtful, balanced and insightful is his reading of his sources. John Dinges' book has helped me to fully understand the implications and meanings of documents I was already familiar with. And now I am much more confident about the big picture, than what I used to be before reading the book. Needless to say, it also reads beautifully. To read it was a real intellectual pleasure.

I love this book. I actually bought it at the book signing and found John Dinges himself to be an intelligent, modest, interesting man. The book itself goes along the same lines as Assasination on Embassy Row in that it recounts the history but put it into a format that is more like a novel. I read the through the entire thing in one day, and although I thought I had a good working knowledge of Chile during the Pinochet regime, I had not even touched on most of the things recounted in this book.

This is a breathtaking tour de force by one of the very best U.S. journalists who have written long and hard about Latin America, and although it may be not obvious, the book has eye-opening relevence to Washington's pursuit of al Qaeda. The Washington Post, moreover, cited the author's "subtlety and insight of his account of Condor, in which Pinochet's murderous (my word) "tactics made some sense in the face of the legitimate (if inflated) threat that the revolutionary left represented. More often, however, Condor targeted pro-democracy and human rights activists, religious leaders, opposition political leaders and peaceful dissidents -- all in the name of winning a self-anointed 'war on terrorism.'" Foreign Affairs said "But Dinges sees this whole sorry episode as a classic case of 'blowback': the unintended consequences of U.S. policies long kept secret from the U.S.public." Sound familiar? Afghanistan?

A fascinating book for anyone who's ever dabbled in rugs. Even if you've been to an Arab souk or an Iranian bazaar, you've probably never come close to the real source of these beautiful objects. Kremmer's trek to the rug-making heartlands helps you appreciate that the carpet on your living room floor didn't materialise in a dealer's show room but was rather the product of a completely different society.

I finished this book about six weeks ago, and I can't stop thinking about it.
So often travel literature-type books by westerners in these kinds of far-off places can be either too clever, cynical or condescending at one end of the scale, or, at the other end too reverent, with a reverence that seems to really be an I-hate-where-I-am-from complex. Both extremes can get tiring pretty quickly.
The Carpet Wars was exactly in the middle, and it was fascinating. It was extremely informative about the history, politics, religion and, yes, even the carpets of the region from Pakistan to Iran. Carpets were merely the thread (so to speak) that held the several first-hand accounts of travels to the region.
Kremmer is a master story teller, and very funny. Sometimes it was hard to tell what was more enjoyable, the story he was telling or the way he was telling it.
His accounts of places with which he is very familiar are told in the rich tones of a deep affection. When he is in a new place, like Isfahan, the account is in the vivid colors of someone seeing something for the first time, creating some of the best travel essays I have ever read. Seven weeks ago, Isfahan was just an exotic name to me, now it's at the top of places I hope I can see before I die.
Its hard to say what recommends this book more, the fact that it is throughly enjoyable, or deeply infomrative.
I haven't read Mr. Kremmer's book about Laos, but it is probably pretty good. Books like The Carpet Wars don't stick with you so long by accident.

Anyone interested in the fine art of rug weaving, the cultures in which Oriental carpets originate, the geography of ancient trade routes including The Silk Road, the history, economics and politics of the Middle East, and present day travel through the strife-torn region will find immense treasure in Christopher Kremmer's The Carpet Wars. "The early Muslims inhabited lands where people were born on carpets, prayed on them, and covered their tombs with them. For centuries, carpets have been a currency and an export, among the first commodities of a globalized trading system" writes the author, who has spent ten years in Asia reporting for the Australian press. He uses Oriental rugs as his motif for writing about his travels in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Tajikistan, Kashmir, and the former Soviet satellite countries of Central Asia. {Here, this reviewer admits his interest enfolds some bias because of my own travels through the region as a Peace Corps worker in less turbulent times. Also, I have the good fortune of working in a store where a wide variety of the very finest examples of Oriental carpets are sold.}
In this book we read that second only to oil, hand made carpets are the region's principal export and were so long before Marco Polo made his famous travels along the Silk Road. Carpets created by various quarreling factions from the Middle and Near East are the focus for retelling how the fighting clans have damaged the carpet trade, effectively wiping out the middle and upper class of society, and left appalling poverty and misery in its wake. Kremmer describes how that even in the midst of war and turmoil, a bazaar will spring up during breaks in the fighting and the carpet merchants will quickly resume business as if nothing had happened. A disappointment for me was that the author omits a description of the many varieties and techniques of rug making; he remains focused on his travels through the Islamic world, giving us the benefit of his first hand witness to the misery.
Believing that only Allah can create anything perfect, the Muslim carpet makers often will deliberately craft a minor flaw in their handiwork that only a practiced eye might discern. Also, we learn that many rugs woven by people living under the duress of conflict will reflect their anxieties and turmoil through the symbols of war - airplanes, helicopters, tanks, and guns. But the rugs also will contain symbols of their makers' traumatic lives not altogether discernible or understood. Like the great paintings of the Renaissance, these works of art may never be fully comprehended. It is enough that fortunate owners of hand knotted and woven rugs might appreciate not only their beauty but also how they portray the soulful deeper meaning of the lives of their creators, leaving a legacy for generations to come. This book is an armchair journey of immense interest. Highly recommended.

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