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Ex-CIA Operative Discusses 'The Devil We Know'
In his new book, The Devil We Know, former CIA operative Robert Baer argues that Iran is an up-and-coming — and often misunderstood — superpower, with strong influences throughout the Middle East.
"The sooner we understand the Iranian paradox — who they are, what they want, how they want to both humble us and work with us — the sooner we'll understand how to come to terms with the new Iranian superpower," writes Baer. In his new book, The Devil We Know, former CIA operative Robert Baer argues that Iran is an up-and-coming — and often misunderstood — ... more -
Hot, Flat, and Crowded
Like it or not, we need Tom Friedman.”
So begins Joseph Nye’s cover review in Washington Post Book World on Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — And How It Can Renew America.
Friedman deserves attention because he is the only “big media” columnist in the country who regularly writes on energy and global warming issues. His book is already #59 on Amazon, and will no doubt jump higher after he appears on Meet the Press Sunday, which I would certainly urge everyone to watch. After all, he is not only the most high-profile columnist on this issue, he is the most thoughtful.
And I’m not just saying that because he interviewed me several times. I am quite confident that most ClimateProgress readers will be impressed by this book, even those who may not agree with every foreign policy position that Friedman has espoused. Or perhaps especially those progressives. Why?
We can’t institute the policies needed to save the nation and the world from multi-decade (if not multi-century) catastrophe if traditional progressives are the only ones pushing this issue. That’s why I take Friedman’s writing on this issue as so important. He’s not one of “the usual suspects.” He looks at things from a more centrist (and multi-Pulitzer-Prize-winning!) perspective — with a strong “national power” angle, which is presumably why they asked Nye to review his book (since Nye is a security expert):
Friedman believes we need to become “green hawks,” turning conservation and cleaner energy into a winning strategy in many different arenas, including the military. (”Nothing,” he writes, “will make you a believer in distributed solar power faster than having responsibility for trucking fuel across Iraq.”) We should stop defining our current era as “post-Cold War,” he says, and see it as an “Energy-Climate Era” marked by five major problems: growing demand for scarcer supplies, massive transfer of wealth to petrodictators, disruptive climate change, poor have-nots falling behind, and an accelerating loss of bio-diversity. A green strategy is not simply about generating electric power, it is a new way of generating national power.
Incremental change will not be enough. The three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for the New York Times scoffs at the kind of magazine articles that list “205 Easy Ways to Save the Earth”….
We need a lot more of the Tom Friedmans of the world to start articulating the dire nature of our energy and climate problems and the urgent need for a clean energy transition.
Of course, I have no doubt that his positions on climate and clean energy will lead the right wing to go after him. He has recently written a couple of great op-eds on McCain’s sham “green”-ness:
1. “Eight Strikes and You’re Out,” calling out McCain for missing eight straight votes on renewable tax credits.
2. “And Then There Was One,” which explains that by choosing Palin, McCain has “completed his makeover from the greenest Republican to run for president to just another representative of big oil.” Like it or not, we need Tom Friedman.” ... more -
Raising the Dead: the men who created Frankenstein
In 1818, the year Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein was in the lab throwing switches and checking gauges amid the lightning flashes, similar actual experiments were underway in a Scottish university. Professor Andrew Ure connected a tube to a battery and shoved it up a corpse's nose. "The tongue moved out to his lips," it was reported. "His eyes opened widely. His head, arms and legs moved." Apparently the body stood up unaided, laborious breathing commenced, and the assembled students screamed out in horror, as well they might. Professor Ure had to stab the creature in the jugular vein to calm it down.
The idea behind Andy Dougan's pleasingly ghoulish Raising the Dead is that Mary Shelley's classic novel was barely fantastical. Eighteenth-century doctors and gentlemen-scholars really were setting corpses grinning, as they sought the origins of life and an understanding of disease.
Luigi Galvani was a physiologist from Bologna who noticed the muscular contractions in the legs of frogs when they were in contact with different metals. Franz Anton Mesmer also examined the nervous systems of dissected frogs - and by placing brass hooks in their spinal columns and leaving them outside in a storm, studied what he termed animal magnetism. From Galvani's thesis of 1791, entitled De Viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari Commentarius ("A Commentary on the Effects of Electricity on Muscular Motion"), it was a short step to experiment on human cadavers, to try to "reanimate vital forces". It was a grisly spectacle of spasms and convulsions. Metal rods were inserted into the bodies, electricity created by a friction machine passed through, and the hands of the dead would be raised and legs clenched.
Karl August Weinhold stuck with kittens. He'd decapitate a healthy kitten and, using electrical wires, get the body to twitch and hop.
Read more... In 1818, the year Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein was in the lab throwing switches and checking gauges amid the lightning flas... more -
'The global food market is neither free nor fair'
IN APRIL, Haiti's prime minister became one of the first political
casualties of the global food crisis, when he was forced to stand down in
the aftermath of violent food riots. Around the world, people are beginning
to fear that such events are a harbinger of things to come. Skyrocketing
prices for many of the world's food staples have triggered social unrest in
more than 32 countries, and a global summit of world leaders met last month
in Rome, Italy, to hash out an emergency response.
Both The End of Food and Eat Your Heart Out went to press before the present
crisis made headlines, yet their dissections of our global food system help
explain why there is mounting hunger despite the fact that the planet
produces enough food to make us all chubby. Think the food crisis is due to
bad weather in Australia or flooding in the US Midwest? Read these books.
Both authors describe a food system that has been shaped not by a "random and inevitable process" but by "one of the most powerful and brutally efficient of all human forces - the market," as Roberts says. This is not the market ripped from the pages of an economics textbook, though. It is neither free nor fair. Instead, the market for food
is distorted by powerful players, creating an "increasingly centralised, uniform and concentrated" system in which a handful of companies control much of the food supply for the world.
Some of these players are more familiar than others. Cargill, for instance, may not be a household name, but as one of the world's largest agribusinesses its fingerprints can be found on most foods at the supermarket. Lawrence quotes a Cargill brochure: "We are the flour in your bread, the salt on your fries, the chicken you eat for dinner, the cotton in your clothing." IN APRIL, Haiti's prime minister became one of the first political ... more -
Bhutto and the future of Islam
She was such a brilliant woman. Her book contains a great modern interpretation of Islam.
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Baby Boomer Autobiography - A very compelling read.
Book Pleasures Karen Atwood Reviews IT STOPS WITH ME: MEMOIR OF A CANUCK GIRL.
There are a number of motivations to write a memoir: proximity to fame, a story that speaks to or is representative of an entire generation, or a life that simply has a fascinating angle. In many ways, Charleen Touchette’s book, It Stops With Me: Memoir Of A Canuck Girl falls into both of the last two catagories.
Like many “baby boomers,” she was born into a picture perfect world, which in her case included a large extended Catholic French-Canadian family, two extremely handsome parents, and a lovely suburban home. Touchette was a wide-eyed, perfectly coiffed, privately educated little girl, who later attended Wellesley College and art school. After meeting her soul mate in college, they lived together, enjoying a Bohemian lifestyle in New York City, befriending inner city people as well as artists before settling down (in a manner of speaking), marrying and having four beautiful children together.
Did she live happily ever after? Well, yes and no. Book Pleasures Karen Atwood Reviews IT STOPS WITH ME: MEMOIR OF A CANUCK GIRL. ... more -
Liberal Fascism
In his new book Jonah Goldberg, a writer for the Conservative National Review, takes on the task of attempting to prove that fascism is actually a left wing phenomenon, and that liberals are the intellectual relatives of fascists. In his new book Jonah Goldberg, a writer for the Conservative National Review, takes on the task of attempting to prove that fascism i... more
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Natural Cures they don't want you to know about? HUH?
Just how good is this 'over a million copies sold' book, anyway?
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My Last Supper
As I reviewed "My Last Supper," in which 50 famous chefs were asked to choose what they would eat for their last meal on Earth, I found myself unexpectedly moved. As I reviewed "My Last Supper," in which 50 famous chefs were asked to choose what they would eat for their last meal on Ear... more
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Memoirs of a Rock n' Roll Muse
This is an interesting review of model/muse/rocker wife Pattie Boyd's memoir, "Wonderful Tonight".
As a never realized rocker-wife myself (I never did get to meet Van Halen when they were touring...but then again, I was only 6), I look forward to this read.
Here's a snippet of the review:
"In Wonderful Tonight, Boyd seems like a real person who happened to be lucky enough to live shoulder to shoulder with rock deities. The prose is clear and unpretentious, and although she writes candidly about the pain her husbands infidelities caused her particularly Harrisons affair with Ringo Starrs first wife, Maureen this isnt a bitter tell-all screed. Theres an aura of sweetness around Boyds approach. Her early years with Harrison, who comes off as a relatively gentle man, clearly were happy ones, and she rather openly states that she regrets leaving him although shes quick to acknowledge she would have regretted missing out on the passion she felt for Clapton. The Clapton chapters are the dreariest in the book, through no fault of Boyds: at the time they were married, Clapton suffered from a serious drinking problem, and he appears to be a total pill, which may be a harsh blow to those who still like to think of him as God. (Claptons own memoir has just been published, so perhaps God will have the last word after all.)" This is an interesting review of model/muse/rocker wife Pattie Boyd's memoir, "Wonderful Tonight". ... more
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