The US and China: Neither Friends Nor Rivals from The Takeaway: Early Edition by feedback@thetakeaway.org (Public Radio International and WNYC Radio)

As Washington prepares for a visit from Chinese President Hu Jintao this week, we take a look at what lies ahead in the shifting relationship between superpowers. Should we fear the "waking dragon"? We're joined by Gideon Rachman, chief foreign-affairs commentator for the Financial Times and author of "Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety," and Simon Tay, was an Asia Society 2009 Bernard Schwartz Fellow and is Chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. He is also the author of "Asia Alone: The Dangerous Post-Crisis Divide from America." Listen to the podcast.

Bob Woodward: Obama's Wars

Lyndon B. Johnson, 

South Vietnam, 1966

In December 2009, Michael Lindenberger wrote “Obama's Afghanistan decision evokes LBJ's 1965 order on Vietnam buildup” for The Dallas Morning News. In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson took ownership of a war he, like Obama, had inherited. Gen. William Westmoreland wanted more troops in Vietnam, and after a protracted debate within the White House, Johnson sent them. Over the next three years, he would send hundreds of thousands more and launch a carpet-bombing campaign against North Vietnam. Johnson's presidency – and many argue, Johnson himself – were destroyed long before America could finally, 10 years later, quit Vietnam. Obama's decision to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan has reawakened those memories of Vietnam's early days, and brought unsettling comparisons from an array of historians who have spent their careers studying Johnson. "I'll tell you, the more that I stayed awake last night thinking of this thing, the more I think of it, I don't know – it looks like to me we're getting into another Korea," Johnson said in 1964 during a tape-recorded conversation with national security adviser McGeorge Bundy. "It just worries the hell out of me. I don't see what we can ever hope to get out of it, once we're committed." McGovern, who campaigned hard for Johnson, said he had expected Johnson to pull back after gaining the presidency in his own right in 1964.

“I think this is a dreadful mistake on President Obama's part. It makes me sad. I am for him. I worked for him, and I still think he is a brilliant man. But it looks to me like Vietnam all over again.”

- Senator George McGovern, 2009

In September 2010, Peter Baker wrote “Woodward Book Says Afghanistan Divided White House” for The New York Times. Some of the critical players in President Obama’s national security team doubt his strategy in Afghanistan will succeed and have spent much of the last 20 months quarreling with one another over policy, personalities and turf, according to the new Bob Woodward book. The book, “Obama's Wars,” by the journalist Bob Woodward, depicts an administration deeply torn over the war in Afghanistan even as the president agreed to triple troop levels there amid suspicion that he was being boxed in by the military. Mr. Obama’s top White House adviser on Afghanistan and his special envoy for the region are described as believing the strategy will not work.

“I have to say that. I can’t let this be a war without end, and I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”

- President Barack Obama to Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, when asked about whether or not his deadline to withdraw was “firm”

“This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan. Everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It's in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room.”

- Barack Obama, telling White House aides as he laid out his reasons for adding 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation

In September 2010, Steve Luxenberg wrote “Bob Woodward book details Obama battles with advisers over exit plan for Afghan war” for the Washington Post. President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward. Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page "terms sheet" that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in "Obama's Wars," to be released on Monday. According to Woodward's meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives.

“It got to the point in the spring, after a top-secret update to the president in the Situation Room at the White House, the president left the meeting and told his aides: What makes us think that given the description of the problem, that we're going to design a solution to this?”

- Bob Woodward, author of Obama's Wars

Sarah Palin: America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag

America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag is the second book by Sarah Palin. It was released on November 23, 2010, and has been described as containing selections from Palin's favorite speeches, sermons, and inspirational works, as well as vignettes about Americans she met in the fall of 2009 while on her book tour for Going Rogue: An American Life. One million copies will be printed for the first run, and a digital edition will be available on the day the book is released. She embarked on a 16-city book tour in America's "heartland" that began on November 23, 2010. The book made number two on the New York Times best seller list during its second week of release. Human Events magazine describes the book as patriotic and optimistic in tone and as bringing life to words from historical figures such as Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy and Abigail Adams. Townhall columnist Katie Pavlich recommends the book to "any American who believes in faith, family, love of country and even history". She describes the book as having a personal touch but as emphasizing faith-guided conservative principles much more than Palin's earlier book, Going Rogue. Amanda Marcotte's review in the Guardian claims that America by Heart is divisive and succeeds in "stoking the feelings of resentment in her target audience against the usual cadre of villains," while containing a subtext which implies that white fundamentalist Christians are the real Americans and that America is the only nation with the right to having feelings of "exceptionalism." The New York Times says the book is full of the patriotic reflections promised by the title, but it is also a road map to the political attacks Palin would make on Barack Obama if she were to run for U.S. President in 2012.





Pre-publication controversy: Several days before the book's release, the website Gawker published excerpts in which Palin criticized Levi Johnston (the father of her grandchild), the TV show American Idol, Hollywood filmmakers, Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, and the Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Palin, who was described as angry about the leak, posted the following message on her Twitter page: "The publishing world is LEAKING out-of-context excerpts of my book w/out my permission? Isn't that illegal?" Within 48 hours, Palin's publisher had sued Gawker for copyright violations and had obtained a federal court order requiring Gawker to remove the material from its website, despite Gawker Media's claim of fair use. The American Spectator called the legal action a "huge victory". On November 20, 2010, Palin published her own "Exclusive Sneak Peek" of the book on her Facebook page. On the day the book was officially released, The Guardian printed extracts from the book on American values, criticism of Barack Obama and his health care legislation, criticism of Levi Johnston and the younger generation.



A paragraph from the new Sarah Palin book on American values: Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States when men were free.

Excerpts written by Sarah Palin in America by Heart, regarding Barack Obama: Too often we hear from the left a different spin on American exceptionalism _ a view that America is somehow worse than other countries, that it is hypocritical about its ideals, falls short of its responsibilities and is forever in need of correction. This has been the main thrust of President's Obama's speech on the world stage since assuming office in January 2009. [...] Take the recent health care debate as an example. The folks pushing President Obama's government health care bill seemed to think that we could be bought. But when we say we believe that our rights are God-given it means something. Those words in the Declaration of Independence are sacred: government can't legitimately violate or add to them.

SARAH PALIN on HANNITY - America By Heart - VIDEO
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"Still, I don't think it's an accident that the opponents of this new American awakening so often accuse Tea Partiers and others of being racist. For one thing, it's a guaranteed conversation stopper. Just saying the word racist instantly ends any legitimate debate. Just the accusation gives the accuser an excuse not to debate the issues at hand." - Sarah Palin, in America by Heart

From Townhall.com: Sarah Palin’s new book, America By Heart (available free with a subscription to Townhall Magazine), comes out today, and any American who believes in faith, family, love of country and even history, will enjoy reading it. Just by taking a look at the cover, Palin is adorned in flags, clearly representing the pride she has for America. Palin’s first New York Times Bestseller, Going Rogue, gave us an idea as to who Sarah Palin is, where she comes from, where she grew up, how she was raised, the feeling of moose eyeballs and of course, the 2008 Presidential campaign. Going Rogue allowed us to get to know Palin on a personal level without the political hoopla. America By Heart emphasizes everything personal about her first book and touches on many of the same topics such as becoming a mother, guiding Bristol through her teenage pregnancy, Alaska, but it reflects much more heavily on conservative principles guided by her faith in addition to historical references dating back to Roman times, JFK putting a man on the moon, Martin Luther King Jr., Ronald Reagan bringing down the Soviet Union and of course modern American politics.



From the National Review, by Kathryn Jean Lopez: Sarah Palin’s new book, America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag, is out today. It’s a good book that reflects exactly what people like about her — her passion for (as it happens) family, faith, and flag. Palin has always been good at highlighting good things that might not otherwise get national attention, and she certainly does that in this book. She praises “unsung heroes” like the Catholic women religious Sisters of Life, “whose members not only pray for the protection of human life but do the hard, selfless work of caring for human life. They help mothers have and raise their children, and they counsel and comfort those who have made decisions they regret.” Speaking of regret, she also mentions AbortionChangesYou.com, “a safe, nonjudgemental place for women and men who are troubled after their own abortions or those of someone close to them. It’s beyond politics or proselytizing, place that honors the legacy of feminists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony by helping women heal.”



The Christian Science Monitor said this about the book, upon its release: Sarah Palin has a new book out Tuesday, and so far it’s fulfilled one of its main purposes: keeping her in the news. The substance of “America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag” – sure to be a best-seller, as was her first work, “Going Rogue: An American Life” – is not surprising. She goes after President Obama, the first lady, the Attorney General, and pretty much anybody in the Obama administration who’s ever talked about race in America. She compares Mitt Romney to John F. Kennedy and finds the former president wanting. She likes hunting (“I eat therefore I hunt”), “American Idol” judge Simon Cowell, and movies with "submersive moral messages," such as “Juno,” “Knocked Up,” and “The Forty-Year-Old Virgin.” Not so much Levi Johnston (the father of then-teen daughter Bristol’s baby), John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign advisers, or the press – referred to as “the media beast.” Then there’s “the shameful tendency on the left not simply to declare their opponents wrong, but to declare them evil.” Much of what leaked out about the book was posted on Gawker.com – at least until Saturday, when a federal judge ordered the excerpts scrubbed from the site as a copyright infringement. (Gawker retaliated with a page called “Sarah Palin Is Mad at Us for Leaking Pages From Her Book.”) According to publisher HarperCollins, Palin’s new literary effort “celebrates the enduring strengths and virtues that have made this country great,” while “ranging widely over American history, culture, and current affairs.”



Comments about in America by Heart about Levi Johnston, father of Bristol's child, Tripp: Of course, we all had to bite our tongues - more than once - as Tripp's father went on a media tour through Hollywood and New York, spreading untruths and exaggerated rhetoric. It was disgusting to watch as his fifteen minutes of fame were exploited by supposed adults taking advantage of a lost kid. [...] But we knew him well enough to see how confused he was during that time, and our hearts broke for him and the price he would pay.

Sarah Palin's comments in the book about the youth of today: In fact, we may be creating a generation of entitled little whiners. I came across an article that reported how growing numbers of employers today complain that many young job applicants exhibit all the signs of having been, there's no other word for it, spoiled. These young people feel entitled to jobs and salaries they haven't earned.

As It Happens for Monday, January 3, 2011 * Australia Floods * OBIT: Pete Postlethwaite * SOD: No Honking * Art Stock Exchange * N. Korea Repeat from As It Happens from CBC Radio

In deep, Down Under. The town of Rockhampton in the Australian state of Queensland suffers the worst of torrential flooding -- and fears the worst is still to come. For the love of Pete. Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent shares fond memories of his friend and colleague, Pete Postlethwaite, who died yesterday at the age of sixty-four. Prisoners at home, pariahs abroad. a repeat of Carol's interview with author Mike Kim about his work with North Korean refugees escaping into China. Listen to the podcast.

There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America

In September 2010, the San Francisco Chronicle said this about the author and book:

Philip Dray, the author of "There Is Power in a Union: The Epic Struggle of Labor in America," comes into the ring with fists flying, and he doesn't let up for a moment. If you love Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," you'll probably love Dray's history, too, with its pageantry and its celebratory prose that shines a bright light of compassion and understanding on ordinary workingmen, women and children. Yes, even American children with white skins toiled 10 hours a day in factories long before corporations moved overseas and put Indian and Pakistani kids to work making shirts and sneakers. Dispassionate historians might find Dray's narrative too often romanticized. They'd have a point. Indeed, his labor heroes tend to be "courageous," to speak "with all heart" and, when they're mowed down by the militia, the streets are awash in "carnage." Still, it's difficult if not impossible to omit colorful language from a book about American workers. The story of unions in America is, as Dray points out, an epic struggle that seemed at times to be fought between good and evil. Nineteenth century labor activists called their initially underground organization the Knights of Labor as though they sprang from the court of King Arthur. As Dray shows, workers saw themselves engaged in an apocalyptic battle to give birth to a new world of economic justice. They could not help but speak as though they were the saviors of humanity from the perceived evils of capitalism.

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George Friedman: The Next Decade: Where We've Been... and Where We're Going

In September, 2010, the author opined within the context of an NPR story on U.S. foreign policies and the Obama Administration; James Traub writes: George Friedman, head of the global intelligence firm Stratfor, recently wrote that "the most significant effect of 9/11" was that "the United States became obsessed with a single region." He concedes that this was inevitable in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Today, though, he argues, it is necessary to ask: "What does the United States lose elsewhere while it focuses on the future of Kandahar?" Friedman shares the Afghanistan Study Group's skepticism about the consequences of military failure there, but he also makes the cold-blooded assertion that "the United States cannot subordinate its grand strategy to simply fighting terrorism even if there will be occasional terrorist attacks on the United States." Kibitzers like Friedman, or me, don't have to deal with U.S. public opinion, of course. Another terrorist attack would make it even harder than it already is for Obama to advance a post-post-9/11 strategy. And I don't think Friedman is right in claiming that, for example, Russia exploited U.S. preoccupation with the Middle East to attack Georgia in 2008. But there are undeniably grave costs to that preoccupation, and not only in blood and treasure. Doubling down in Afghanistan has further ratcheted up the public sense of menace — they'll attack us here if we don't stop them there — while the failure to make headway has deepened public cynicism about America's capacity to shape a better world. Obama has adopted from Bush the premise that the United States must find a way to tame the Islamic world, though he has tried to go about it in a very different way. But though this may be true in the long run, in the short run it has turned out to be a thankless task. Read that full NPR story here.

Michael Mandelbaum, U.S. Deficits, and a "Frugal Superpower"

Foreign Affairs recently interviewed Michael Mandelbaum. He was introduced this way:

Partisan squabbling on U.S. spending priorities continued following the release of the White House's deficit-reduction commission report on December 1. Some Democratic lawmakers lamented proposed cuts to entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security and an increase in the retirement age from 67 to 69, while Republican lawmakers objected to suggested tax increases and cuts to military spending. Though the report is unlikely to garner political agreement on needed cuts, says SAIS foreign policy professor Michael Mandelbaum, it drives home the message that "everybody will have to take a hit." Mandelbaum, author of the book The Frugal Superpower: America's Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era, says an inevitable result of deficit reductions for U.S. foreign policy will be fewer U.S. interventions abroad. Still, he stresses the need for continued military presence in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. U.S. presence in East Asia is especially vital to economic growth, says Mandelbaum, since U.S. naval forces protect international trade routes. He says the greatest threat likely to emerge from a reduced U.S. presence abroad is Iran, which could attempt to "control the supplies of oil on which the global economy depends."

See the full interview here. The Wall Street Journal recently quoted the author as well; here is his "unpopular" notion:

“The U.S. could improve by weakening its adversaries by reducing revenues they receive to make trouble,” Mandelbaum said. “The way to do that is to raise the price of gasoline through a gasoline tax. It’s one way to compensate for the fiscal problems.” He said that while he realizes this is probably one of the most unpopular policy proposals in the U.S., he hopes to see this policy transpire through a “backdoor” through proposed carbon taxes in current deficit reduction proposals.

See that WSJ piece here. The author was recently on NPR's Weekend Edition as well. See the webpage for that feature story on U.S. deficits here. On the NPR webpage, you'll see this about the author:

According to Haass, a Chinese banker could be more of a threat than China's military. It's not that experts are worried that China will take America's place, though. "There's nobody else to take our place," says Michael Mandelbaum, professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "China is certainly becoming richer and will become more powerful and will become more influential in East Asia, but I don't see China becoming a global power or assuming the kind of global responsibilities that the U.S. bears anytime soon," Mandelbaum says. But the U.S. also won't be able to play the kind of role it has in the past, as Mandelbaum points out in his latest book, The Frugal Superpower. "I believe the kinds of military interventions that the U.S. has conducted over the last two decades — in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan — are going to be discontinued. Because those military interventions, although initiated under two administrations for differing reasons, they all landed us with the expensive, difficult and frustrating task of nation-building."

Thanassis Cambanis, Hezbollah, Terrorism, and "Engagement Hawks"

WNYC recently reported on Hezbolah, and asked Cambanis to opine on the subject. The following is a podcast summary: Veteran Middle East correspondent Thanassis Cambanis discusses the cross section of people that make up Hezbollah—part standing army, part political party, and part theological movement. >A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah's Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel looks at the organization and the people it includes, and Cambanis follows a few Hezbollah families through the 2006 war with Israel in order to get a fuller understanding of the ideological and religious roots of the conflict in the Middle East.. See the WNYC webpage on this feature here. Download the podcast here. See also: Hezbollah: A Short History (Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics), Tea with Hezbollah: Sitting at the Enemies Table Our Journey Through the Middle East, Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Cambanis recently wrote in the Boston Globe: There's an increasingly assertive group of “engagement hawks” — a group of professional diplomats, military officers, and academics — is arguing that a mindless, macho refusal to engage might be causing as much harm as terrorism itself. Brushing off dialogue with killers might look tough, they say, but it is dangerously naive, and betrays an alarming ignorance of how, historically, intractable conflicts have actually been resolved. And today, after a decade of war against stateless terrorists that has claimed thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of foreign lives, and cost trillions of dollars, it’s all the more important that we choose the most effective methods over the ones that play on easy emotions. See that Boston Globe article by Cambanis here.

Isabel Allende

The other day, the San Francisco Chronicle listed a "best of 2010" list that focused on Bay Area authors. Of the books, Island Beneath the Sea, by Isabel Allende. In this novel about a slave in what is now Haiti, Allende creates a unique, accessible entry point to histories that deserve to be told. Read that complete list here. Wikipedia's introduction to the article on the author, this way:

Isabel Allende Llona (born 2 August 1942) is a Chilean writer with American citizenship.[1] Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the "magic realist" tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus) (1982) and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias) (2002), which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called "the world’s most widely read Spanish-language author".[2] In 2010 she received Chile's National Literature Prize.[3] In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[4] Allende's novels are sometimes based upon her own personal experiences and often pay homage to the lives of women, while weaving together elements of myth and realism. She has lectured and toured many American colleges to teach literature. Allende adopted American citizenship in 2003 and has lived in California with her husband since 1989.

The same Wikipedia entry contains a section on the criticisms that author Allende has received over the years.

Despite or perhaps because of her commercial success and "being compared to Gabriel García Márquez," Allende has been the subject of negative criticism from other authors and literary critics — among them Roberto Bolaño.[27] In an article published in Entre paréntesis, Bolaño writes that Allende's literature is anemic and compares it to a person on his deathbed.[28] Bolaño has been one of her harshest critics, saying that it is to give her credit to call her a writer and that she is rather a "writing machine".[29] Literary critic Harold Bloom concurs with Bolaño that Allende is a bad writer, and adds that she only reflects a determinate period and that afterwards everybody will have forgotten her.[29][30] Of Bolaño, Allende said to El Clarín that she is honoured to be represented by him as a Chilean, although she remembered Bolaño regarded her as trash.[31] In the same interview, Allende recognises that she has rarely had good criticism in Chile and that Chilean intellectuals "detest" her. Novelist Gonzalo Contreras says that "she commits a grave error, to confuse the commercial success with literary quality".[32] Allende disagrees with these assessments of her, and she has also been quoted as saying: The fact people think that when you sell a lot of books you are not a serious writer is a great insult to the readership. I get a little angry when people try to say such a thing. There was a review of my last book in one American paper by a professor of Latin American studies and he attacked me personally for the sole reason that I sold a lot of books. That is unforgivable.[33] Alternatively, it has been noted[by whom?] that "Allende's impact not only on Latin American literature but also on world literature cannot be overestimated."[19] The Los Angeles Times has called Allende "a genius,"[19] and she has received many international awards, including the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize,[19] granted to writers "who have contributed to the beauty of the world."[19] She has recently been called a "literary legend" by Latino Leaders Magazine, which in its 2007 article named Allende as the third most influential Latino leader in the world.[19]

Find that Wikipedia article, here. She was also a speaker at TED.



Other books by Allende: The House of the Spirits, La isla bajo el mar (Vintage Espanol) (Spanish Edition), Ines of My Soul: A Novel, La casa de los espíritus, Daughter of Fortune: A Novel (P.S.), Paula: A Memoir (P.S.), City of the Beasts (P.S.)

"Jindal Speaks About New Book" from KTBS

KTBS in Louisiana reports the following:

In his book, "Leadership and Crisis," Governor Bobby Jindal [Republican] doesn't mince words when it comes to the federal government's response to the BP oil spill, calling it "lackadaisical almost from the start." He blames the lack of boom needed to protect Louisiana's shoreline on rigid rules and regulations, and the government's refusal to relax requirements even in time of crisis. Jindal says it was reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina. It was contentious from the start. Government officials, he says, were more worried about procedure than outcomes. He points to the moratorium on all gulf drilling as an example. Estimates are the moratorium has cost Louisiana between 8,000 - 12,000 jobs. The economic impact of that is still out; but the governor says some of the rigs rented for up to half-a-million dollars a day, rents that included taxes to the state.

See the local news page here. Meanwhile, the governor's facing a long-shot recall prospect, spearheaded by Ronnie Caesar, a Ph.D student in public policy at a university in Louisiana. KTBS reports: "With less than a year until the next governor's race, a petition has been filed to recall Governor Bobby Jindal. The petitioner, Ronnie Ceasar of Opelousas, filed the documents Wednesday afternoon with the Secretary of State's Office. Ceasar says he's fed up with cuts to Louisiana's higher education and health care. "Has anyone done an impact study to see what these cuts are going to do to the poor, the disenfranchised," said Ceasar." See the KTBS webpage on this story, here. User-reader comments on the page are interesting to foreigners of Louisiana. The other day, a State Representative Damon Baldone [Democrat] published a letter in a New York newspaper, while Jindal was there fundraising and promoting a book. The Representative said this: “We haven’t seen much of Jindal back home [...] First, he spent months jetting around the country campaigning for other politicians. Now, he’s back on the road promoting his book and raising money. ... Clearly, personal political aspirations are more important to him than the reality we face here in Louisiana. Our people are facing the largest budget deficits in recent memory — a crisis measured in the billions, not just the hundreds of millions.” See the news story on this issue here. See also: Bobby Jindal: The Transformational Story of a Brown-skinned, Die-hard Conservative in the Deep South, Bobby Jindal

"Richard Holbrooke: Kennedy Democrat The savior of Sarajevo believed that American power should be used for good." from the Wall Street Journal by FOUAD AJAMI

Richard Holbrooke, who died this week at age 69, loved epigraphs. They are strewn all over his writings—poems and passages from Euripides, W.H. Auden, Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot, the diplomatist and historian Harold Nicolson. An epigraph from Herman Melville turns up early in Holbrooke's remarkable chronicle of his experience in the Balkans, "To End a War" (1998). "With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts." Holbrooke lived the life of his choice, driven by that itch. The Holbrooke story could have ended in the Mekong Delta, where as a young man he served as "pacification adviser." He could have perished, as three of his colleagues traveling with him did, in the summer of 1995, on the treacherous Mount Igman road to Sarajevo. Mr. Ajami is a professor at The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

See that article here. The other day, the Dutch newspaper, DeVerdieping Trouw wrote this [a translation from its original dutch:

When Bill Clinton became president in 1993 he returned to government and government, first as ambassador to Germany and then in Washington as Assistant Secretary for European Affairs. In 1996, Holbrooke at his own request relieved from that post because he wanted to spend more time on his marriage to writer Kati Marton, his third wife. He married her in 1995, the year of 'Dayton'. About his role as architect of the peace treaty he wrote the book "To End a War." In the aftermath claimed the former political leader of Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, the ICTY last year that Holbrooke him in exchange for his departure from politics was promised immunity from prosecution. The diplomat denied that strongly.

See that Dutch article, here. See also: No Man's Land, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat, Not My Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia

"The Master Switch": Is the Internet due for a takeover? - from Slate.com - by Laura Miller

In "The Master Switch," Wu assembles all of these stories and reframes them as battles in a shifting landscape of high-stakes industrial warfare, from Ma Bell's dastardly campaigns against small independent phone companies to the conquest of every aspect of the movie industry -- from talent and production to distribution and theaters -- by the ruthless moguls of the studios' heyday. He scrutinizes the postwar years when AT&T was treated like a shadow agency of the federal government, and recounts how the Machiavellian head of RCA, David Sarnoff, double-crossed an idealistic old friend to suppress the introduction of FM radio (a technology whose capabilities have yet to be fully explored) for decades. These industries -- "the defining business ventures of our time," according to Wu -- "have from their inception been subject to the same cycle of rise and fall, imperial consolidation and dispersion." Furthermore, "the time has come when we must pay attention" because we are now, with the Internet, "on the high end of a pendulum arc that, so far, has always begun to swing in the opposite direction -- toward greater control and centralization." And while Wu strives for balance, acknowledging that monopolies can provide seamless service, efficiency, high-quality content and sometimes even lower prices, his heart is clearly with the wild and woolly (if also sometimes scruffy) nature of the wide-open model that currently abides online.

Read Miller's article at the Slate, here. David Leonhardt at The New York Times' Sunday Book Review, also covered the book the other day:

It was one of the more extraordinary instances of Ma Bell’s involvement with Uncle Sam. The company owed its very existence to a favorable federal patent ruling in 1878, which saved it from an early death at the hands of Western Union, the dominant telegraph company then trying to crush its new rival. A little more than a century later, Washington broke up AT&T. But regulators soon allowed many of the company’s parts to merge back together. This consolidation, Tim Wu argues in “The Master Switch,” probably allowed the Bush administration to conduct its wiretapping program in secret for so long. AT&T is the star of Wu’s book, an intellectually ambitious history of modern communications. The organizing principle — only rarely overdrawn — is what Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, calls “the cycle.” “History shows a typical progression of information technologies,” he writes, “from somebody’s hobby to somebody’s industry; from jury-rigged contraption to slick production marvel; from a freely accessible channel to one strictly controlled by a single corporation or cartel — from open to closed system.” Eventually, entrepreneurs or regulators smash apart the closed system, and the cycle begins anew.

Read that New York Times article, here. Also, a couple of weeks ago, the Washington Post sat down with the author, and offered this introduction to the author:

Tim Wu is a law professor at Columbia University, author of the (excellent) new book "The Master Switch" and chairman of the board of Free Press. Oh, and he coined the term "net neutrality" in 2003. He spoke with me from Canada, where he's promoting his book, about the net neutrality rules that Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, outlined this week. A lightly edited transcript follows.

The interview focused on the issue of net neutrality. Read a partial transcript of that interview at the Washington Post. The Atlantic also covered the author, the issue of net neutrality, and his book (of course):

What Faulkner once said about the American South -- "The past isn't dead. It's not even past" -- is now true of tech and telecom policy as well. The perennial Great Divide in tech policy is about the merits of applying existing regulatory models to the latest technology. The question of the moment is about whether and how government should regulate Internet broadband. And the debate is now roaming into lessons-from-history thanks to a fascinating new book, The Master Switch, by Professor Tim Wu of Columbia Law School.

Pair Tim Wu with Gerald Sussman. Sussman is a bit more academic, in terms of reading. The book we're suggesting here, "Communication, Technology, and the Politics in the Information Age," can come off as heavy reading over the weekend. It's often assigned at media and sociology of science and technology courses at universities. Sussman is a friend of some of our editors, and a professor to others of ours. But other than that, and the pennies we get in affiliate income from "the bookstore," we're pairing Sussman because in this title in particular, you have something of a Michael Pollan about technology and industrial science here; that is to say, you're presented with a narrative context, enveloped in economics, statistics, historical facts, events, dates, about momentous waves and social patterns in Sussman; and you get this with the more contemporary take, by Tim Wu. It pairs a bit heavy to the academic side, but as is the case with most heavily academic pairings, it's a couple of titles that you can languish over, that you can reread, and reference over and over again, through the years. That's incredibly difficult to say about texts these days, that cover such pertinent, current, and relevant issues as net neutrality and public policies about technology and industrial sciences. See Wikipedia's take on Gerald Sussman, here.

The Colbert Report - December 6, 2010 - Garry Trudeau

December 06, 2010 - Garry Trudeau Views: 76,690 Aired: 12/06/10 Episode 06154 Obama tries to win over Republicans, and Garry Trudeau looks back on 40 years of "Doonesbury."

View the episode here. See also: 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective, Garry Trudeau: Doonesbury and the Aesthetics of Satire (Great Comics Artists Series), Signature Wound: Rocking TBI (Doonesbury Collection)

My Generation from WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

William Upski Wimsatt, hip hop and graffiti writer, founder of the League of Young Voters and the author of Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs: A Midterm Report on My Generation and the Future of Our Super Movement, talks about the state of (no longer so) young radical Americans.

Listen to the podcast here. Download the podcast here. See also: Bomb the Suburbs: Graffiti, Race, Freight-Hopping and the Search for Hip-Hop's Moral Center, No More Prisons: Urban Life, Homeschooling, Hip-Hop Leadership, the Cool Rich Kids Movement, a Hitchhiker's Guide to Community Organizing, and Why Philanthropy ... the Greatest Art Form of the 21st Century!, How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office: The Anti-Politics, Un-Boring Guide to Power

Latin America in the 21st Century from KERA's Think Podcast

[2010-10-25 12:00:00] How has Latin America manage to successfully weather the economic storms of the last few years and will the countries south of the U.S.-Mexico border emerge as leaders in the future? We'll talk this hour with Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, author of the new book "What if Latin America Ruled the World?: How the South Will Take the North Through the 21st Century" (Bloomsbury Press, 2010).

Listen to the podcast here. Download the podcast here.

The bigots of NPR from NY Post: News by By RICH LOWRY

We should have known about Juan Williams long ago. The signs of a simmering bigotry were always there. The political commentator wrote the book "Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965." He followed that up with an admiring biography of Thurgood Marshall. Then, more books on the African-American religious experience, historically black colleges and black farmers. If there was anyone clearly on the verge of exploding in a venomous rant against a minority group, it was Williams. And then, inevitably, it happened. At least that's what National Public Radio must believe. The government-funded media outfit fired Williams for comments on the Fox News program "The O'Reilly Factor" that wouldn't even be considered particularly controversial outside the hothouse of NPR.

Read the full NY Post article here. See also: Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 (African American History (Penguin)), This Far by Faith: Stories from the African American Religious Experience

Charlie Rose - Ingrid Betancourt from YouTube - CharlieRose's Channel by CharlieRose

Ingrid Betancourt discusses her memoir 'Even Silence has an End - My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle,' the book chronicles Betancourt's six years as a hostage of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia known as FARC www.CharlieRose.com

Watch the video on YouTube. Or check CharlieRose.com for the full interview. This article's utterly depressing. If you're feeling sick about having to pay bills or getting dumped, read it, and you'll feel lucky.

Gender Politics: Women and the Midterm Elections from WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

Betsy Reed, executive editor of The Nation and co-editor of Going Rouge: Sarah Palin – An American Nightmare, and Rebecca Traister, senior writer for Salon and author of the new book Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women, talk about women and the midterm elections.

Listen to the show here, read from the show's web page here. See also: Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women

What Happens to 'Washington Outsiders' When They Get Inside Washington? from The Takeaway: Early Edition by feedback@thetakeaway.org (Public Radio International and WNYC Radio)

With mid-term elections only weeks away, many Tea Party candidates are campaigning as self-declared "Washington outsiders." U.S. Senate candidates like Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell and Ron Johnson are relatively new to politics and are using their lack of experience as a way to sell their candidacy to voters. But once these “outsiders” get to the inside, what do they find, and is it possible to really change Washington, like they promise to do? We talk with James Morone, a political science professor at Brown University, about the history of the Washington outsider in modern politics. Morone is author of the book, “The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office.”

Read the full post here. Listen to the podcast here.

Is There A Single Tea Party Platform? from The Takeaway: Early Edition by feedback@thetakeaway.org (Public Radio International and WNYC Radio)

Ever since April 15th, when Tea Party groups emerged around the country, the public has been hearing a lot about what—and at whom—Tea Party anger is directed. But as America heads into the midterms with dozens of candidates endorsed by local Tea Party groups on the ballot, it's time to take a look at what the Tea Party wants. In other words, without a national party structure or official spokespeople, what is the best way to identify common planks of a Tea Party platform? Matt Kibbe joins the show to discuss that question. He’s the president of conservative political group FreedomWorks, and the author of a book called "Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto."

Listen to the podcast here. Download the podcast, mp3 file here.