Tag: Book Review
Review of “The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh” – ed. Levon Chorbajian
Books of 2019!
As of this writing, I have read 53 nonfiction books in 2019, although I am still working on finishing several others.
However, since I don’t expect to be finishing any of the books I am reading right now in the next month, I thought now wouldn’t be a bad time to do a annual recap of all the books I read in 2019 🙂
Here are all the books I read in 2019 (not in order):
- The Struggle for Algeria — Joseph Kraft
- The Condition of the Working Class in England — Fredrich Engels
- Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide — Gerard Prunier
- The Origins of the Civil War in Tajikistan: Nationalism, Islamism, and Violent Conflict in Post-Soviet Space — Tim Epkenhans
- How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger — Susan George
- The East Pakistan Tragedy — L. Rushbrook Williams
- Balochistan: In Quest of Freedom — Syed Ramsey
- West Papua: The Obliteration of a People — Carmel Budiardjo and Liem Soei Liong
- War Economy and Crisis – Hyman Lumer
- The Right to Self-Determination in the South Caucasus: Nagorno-Karabakh in Context — Bahruz Balayev
- From Conflict to Autonomy in the Caucasus: The Soviet Union and the making of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno Karabakh — Arsene Saparov
- Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism — Kwame Nkrumah
- Atomic Imperialism: The State, Monopoly, and the Bomb — James S. Allen
- The Sudanese Communist Party: Ideology and Party Politics — Tareq Y. Ismael
- Politics in Sierra Leone, 1947-1967 — John R. Cartwright
- Cuba: Anatomy of a Revolution — Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy
- Against All Odds: A Chronicle of the Eritrean Revolution — Dan Connell
- Third World Colonialism and Strategies of Liberation: Eritrea and East Timor Compared — Awet Tewelde Weldemichael
- A History of South Sudan: From Slavery to Independence — Øystein H. Rolandsen and M.W. Daly
- The Communist Movement in Nepal: Origins and Development — Bhim Rawal
- Ethiopia’s Revolution — Raul Valdes Vivo
- Memories — Andrei Gromyko
- The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Iraq — Tareq Y. Ismael
- Namibia’s Liberation Struggle: The Two-Edged Sword — Colin Leys and John S. Saul
- The Baloch and Balochistan: A Historical Account from the Beginning to the Fall of the Baloch State — Naseer Dashti
- The Supreme Court of Canada: History of the Institution — James G. Snell and Frederick Vaughan
- The History of Siberia: From Russian Conquest to Revolution — Alan Wood
- Kenya’s War of Independence: Mau and its Legacy of Resistance to Colonialism and Imperialism, 1948-1990 — Shiraz Durrani
- Fifty Fighting Years: The Communist Party of South Africa, 1921-1971 — A. Lerumo
- Kyrgyzstan: Beyond “Democracy Island” and “Failing State”: Social and Political Changes in a Post-Soviet Society — Marlène Laruelle (Editor), Johan Engvall (Editor)
- The Balkan Wars, 1912-13: The War Correspondence of Leon Trotsky — Leon Trotsky
- Psychiatric Hegemony: A Marxist Analysis of Mental Illness — Bruce M. Z. Cohen
- Land and Agrarian Reform in Zimbabwe: Beyond White Settler Capitalism — Sam Moyo
- Amilcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and Peoples War — Patrick Chabal
- Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan — A. C. Grayling
- Fiji: Race and Politics in and Island State — Michael Howard
- Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR — Abeed Khalid
- A History of Niger: 1850-1960 — Finn Fuglestad
- Tajikistan: The Trials of Independence — Shirin Akiner, Mohammad-Reza Djalili, Frederic Grare
- The Trial of Hissène Habré: How the People of Chad Brought a Tyrant to Justice — Celeste Hicks
- Cultural Cleansing in Iraq: Why Museums Were Looted, Libraries Burned and Academics Murdered — Raymond William Baker, Tareq Y. Ismael, Shereen T. Ismael
- A Tibetan Revolutionary: The Political Life and Times of Bapa Phüntso Wangye — Melvyn C. Goldstein, Dawei Sherap, and William R. Siebenschuh
- State of Rebellion: Violence and Intervention in the Central African Republic — Louisa Lombard
- The Problem of India — R. Palme Dutt
- Burkina Faso: A History of Power, Protest, and Revolution — Ernest Harsch
- The First Socialist Schism: Bakunin vs. Marx in the International Workingmen’s Association — Wolfgang Eckhardt
- Sir George Goldie and the Making of Nigeria — J. E. Flint
- The Fulani Empire of Sokoto — H. A. S. Johnston
- An Act of Genocide: Colonialism and the Sterilization of Aboriginal Women — Karen Stote
- Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan — Adrienne Lynn Edgar
- The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic — Paul Bergne
- Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic — Ervand Abrahamian
- Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865-1923 — Jeff Sahadeo
Most of the reviews I wrote for these books were published on other sites (another blog of mine, GoodReads, etc.). Below are reviews of what I feel are some of the most important books I read in 2019. Enjoy!
Continue reading “Books of 2019!”The Permanent War Economy and De-industrialization
(Image: Detroit, Michigan, the former centre of America’s auto industry. Source)
Politicians of all political stripes like to dress inflated military budgets, and the wicked arms deals that frequently accompany them, in terms of “job creation.” Former U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, arguing against any reduction in military funding, claimed that any decrease “would result in job cuts that would add potentially 1 (percentage point) to the national unemployment rate.”[1] Here in Canada, both Stephen Harper and his Liberal counterpart Justin Trudeau have justified the $15 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, the largest such deal in Canadian history, as a means of creating jobs. “The fact is that there are jobs in London relying on this” deal, Trudeau said [2].
A closer examination will reveal something different. By not producing a life-serving product, i.e., an article used for either consumption or for further production, military spending is not only the worst of available choices for job creation, it contributes to industrial and infrastructure decay. Continue reading “The Permanent War Economy and De-industrialization”