Left Eye on Books

interview with Bacevich

2008-11-02T05:47:00.000-08:00

Tom's Dispatch has a phone interview with Andrew Bacevich. Bacevich's new book, The Limits of Power, is excellent, and although he is clearly by disposition a fairly moderate conservative, his critique is more sweeping and audacious than that of many on the left.

Mike Davis on Against the Grain

2008-11-02T05:18:00.000-08:00

Interview with Mike Davis on Against the Grain. Davis' discussion of the crucial position of the Chinese working class is right on, but then he gives way to his tendency to look morbidly on developments in the US, rather than identifying opportunities.

Naomi Klein and her Critics

2008-09-03T03:03:00.001-07:00

Naomi Klein has a piece on Common Dreams responding to her critics here. For someone who complains about how she has mostly been ignored by her targets, her decision to ignore critics to her left grates. To read her, one might get the impression that the Shock Doctrine is the first serious critical examination of neoliberalism, or, worse, that the only people who disagree with her glorification of Keynesianism and her economistic reading of the last forty years of history are on the right. Nothing could be further from the truth. Her book has its virtues, but its failure to consider some of the tensions within the right wing counterassault (differences between neoliberalism and neoconservatism, for example), her inability to place US power in a global context, her marginalization of anti-capitalism in favor of Keynesianism, make it a weak guide for the left. Lengthier thoughts here.

Update

2008-08-10T06:15:00.000-07:00

Posted a review of Revolutionaries to Race Leaders by Brad Duncan. My own thoughts on this book are here.

New Update

2008-07-31T15:21:00.000-07:00

Added a review of Radical Passions.

New Updates

2008-07-30T06:28:00.000-07:00

Added reviews of Kim Moody, Bill Fletcher, and Kim Scipes on Steve Ellner. Allow me to distance myself from Scipes description of the AFL-CIO as among the 'sharks' surrounding Hugo Chavez. The AFL-CIO had links to a labor federation that supported the coup attempt against Chavez, which they stupidly maintained. But unlike Chile in 1973, there is no evidence that the AFL-CIO engaged in a vigorous program to overthrow the government.

Outlaws of America

2006-05-17T19:24:00.000-07:00

Outlaws of America is a new history of the Weather Underground. Another book along these lines is Bringing the War Home. These books usefully disrupt the standard version of what happened in the late sixties. On the other hand, there is a danger of romanticizing the Weather Underground.

Greg Palast on Democracy Now!

2006-05-16T19:42:00.000-07:00

Greg Palast was on Democracy Now! Monday promoting his new book Armed Madhouse. I'm not that big a fan of Palast, to be honest, whose overelaborate networks of elites are symptomatic of the anti-intellectualism of the left these days (no theory of how the world works beyond mendacity). But he often has interesting things to say:

And so, what happened was is that they sent us a bunch of lists of literally tens of thousands of names of voters and addresses. We were wondering what the heck this was. It turns out these were almost all African American voters, who they were prepared to challenge in 2004, and they did, to say that these people shouldn't vote, because their addresses are suspect. And you'll see in the book that in the lists of thousands of black voters that they were challenging over their address were thousands of black soldiers who were sent to Iraq; go to Baghdad, and the Republican Party challenges your vote.

And that’s the beginning, and because there's been really no action taken, they're accelerating the system now. And the next thing that they’re going after is the Hispanic vote. So when we saw two million votes cast/not counted in 2000, nearly four million votes cast/not counted in 2004, you're going see that number massively increase in challenges to voters in 2008. And that's what's going back to this database story with the National Security Agency.

AMY GOODMAN: We have 30 seconds.

GREG PALAST: So, you have to say, “Why are they collecting this data?” The answer is 2008. It's ultimately all about the elections.

Palast also makes a reference to his 'capitalist pig publisher' (Dutton). Memo to Palast--there are a lot of non-capitalist pig publishers out there. If he accomplished nothing else, George Lakoff proved that at least some of them know how to market liberal books.

Kristina Borjesson

2006-05-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

Kristina Borjesson, editor of Into the Buzzsaw, has edited a new, provocative book The Media After 9/11, Top Journalists Speak Out (thanks, Extra!). Maybe not so provocative--perhaps it is just my imagination, but it seems that a critique of the mainstream media as complacently complicit with corporate America has migrated far beyond the left where it used to be confined.

Empire's Workshop

2006-05-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

Greg Grandin on Democracy Now! today talking about his book, "Empire's Workshop":

Well, in the years between September 11th and the invasion of Iraq, there was a number of books and articles trying to take the measure, compare the United States to other empires. They searched historical analogies. They looked to the U.S. as one experience. In Germany and Japan after World War II, they compared it to Rome and Britain and the French empire, but they all seemed to ignore the one place where the United States had the most extensive imperial experience, and that was in Latin America.

In Latin America was where the United States learned how to be an exceptional empire, extraterritorial -- administer extraterritorial countries without actual direct colonialism. And then, I also started to think more about why so many of the administration’s advisers and officials and hanger-ons, people like Elliott Abrams and Otto Reich and Donald Kagan and even John Bolton, who was in the Justice Department during Iran-Contra, came out of Reagan’s Central American policy. And it seemed to me that the connections between Bush's post-9/11 pre-emptive aggressive militarist foreign policy and Reagan’s Central American policy was actually much more profound than a mere recycling of these personnel.

More on Overthrow

2006-04-23T18:36:00.000-07:00

Mokhiber and Weissman write about Kinzer's Overthrow at Commondreams. They suggest he was pushed out of (or left) the Times for his political views.

Kinzer left the Times last year. He says that the parting was "perfectly amicable" -- although he doesn't sound convincing when he says this.

They are also scathing on Terry Gross' interview with Kinzer on Fresh Air:

Gross tried to get Kinzer to concede that if we hadn't overthrown these governments, the Soviets would have taken over, or today, radical Islam will take over.
Kinzer didn't give an inch.

For example, Gross said that had we not overthrown these 14 governments, "the Soviets might have won the Cold War."

"I don't think that's true at all," Kinzer responded. "In the first place, the countries whose governments we overthrew, all countries that we claimed were pawns of the Kremlin, actually were nothing of the sort. We now know, for example, that the Kremlin had not the slightest interest in Guatemala at all in the early 1950s. They didn't even know Guatemala existed. They didn't even have diplomatic or economic relations."

"The leader of Iran who we overthrew was fiercely anti-communist. He came from an aristocratic family. He despised Marxist ideology."

"In Chile, we always portrayed President Allende as a cat's paw of the Kremlin. We now know from documents that have come out that the Soviets and the Chinese were constantly fighting with him and urging him to calm down and not be so provocative towards the Americans. So, in the first place, the Soviets were not behind those regimes. We completely overestimated the influence of the Soviet Union on those regimes."

When Gross asked Kinzer what he thought of the "spread of radical Islam," Kinzer didn't hesitate.

"We sometimes like to think that our interventions in these countries don't have effects, but when we break down the doors of foreign countries and impose our own leaders, as we did in Iran and as we've recently done in Iraq, we outrage a lot of people," Kinzer said. "We like to think that everybody will soon calmly come to realize that by rational standards, this was a good thing to do. But that doesn't happen. We are not able to change cultures as easily as we are able to change regimes."

Incidentally, Overthrow is currently at #12 on the Amazon Bestseller list.

Overthrow

2006-04-21T18:59:00.000-07:00

Stephen Kinzer is on Democracy Now! today talking about his book Overthrow, which recounts the last century of 'regime change' by the US. I heard him denouncing the role of the press in hyping up the 'brutality' of Spanish Colonial rule in Cuba. This is ironic for those of with long memories, who recall Kinzer's culpability in the New York Times apologies for Contra terrorism in the eighties.

A few interesting new books

2006-04-17T09:22:00.000-07:00

Whispering in the Giant's Ear: A frontline Chronicle from Bolivia's War on Globalization.

People's Movements, People's Press: The Journalism of Social Justice Movements .

Will the Boat Sink the Water?

International Zapatismo

2006-04-06T08:00:00.000-07:00

David Graeber has a review of International Zapatismo in the current issue of NACLA. I have long thought a book length study of the Zapatistas' networks beyond Chiapas was needed.

The Nation and Books

2006-04-05T15:56:00.000-07:00

The Nation book section has an excellent essay by Rebecca Solnit (whose Hope in the Dark is really a must read) about Betty Friedan, Jane Jacobs and Rachel Carson. And then, to balance things, it has one of the most puzzling of its choices of books to review, The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in 20th Century Sicence, Including the Original Papers.

Noam Chomsky--Again

2006-04-03T19:34:00.000-07:00

Noam Chomsky is on Democracy Now!, a two-part interview relating to his new book, Failed States. I think it would be good for everyone involved--Democracy Now!, its listeners, and maybe Chomsky himself--if the show gave Chomsky a rest for a year or so. Ditto Howard Zinn. Get some fresh perspectives for a change.

American Theocracy

2006-03-22T14:36:00.000-08:00

The big news this week in political books is Kevin Phillips American Theocracy. I broadly agree with his analysis, as I've heard it summarized here and there: the religious right is too strong, foreign policy is out of control (although I don't think it's only about oil), and the US is dangerously in debt. I wonder--are we getting this from a former Nixon administration figure because the left is ignored, or because so few left thinkers shoot such big targets with their analysis?

The Nation Book Section, Part II

2006-03-16T17:51:00.000-08:00

I forgot to mention the worst thing about The Nation's book section: its reactionary choice of presses to focus on. I tallied up the book reviews in all The Nations my public library had stashed on the shelves, beneath the new copy. 23 books reviewed were from large presses like Knopf, Basic, Penguin, Norton. 7 were from small presses (and I was generous in including some borderline majors in small presses). 10 were from university presses, although less of the social science/history/cultural studies from those than you would think, given the prominence of left wing writers in those area (instead, histories of classical music). And 0 books from recognizably left wing presses like South End, AK Press, Monthly Review, or Verso. O. What exactly is The Nation's political agenda?

The Nation Book Section

2006-03-15T15:13:00.000-08:00

What is up with the book section of the Nation, the most important periodical on the left in the US? Here are some typical books recently reviewed: Federico Fellini: His Life and Work. The Power of Movies. Do the editors really believe these are works that demand the attention of a left audience? Although there are some relevant titles, like At Canaan's Edge and The Intellectuals and the Flag, virtually all the reviews are much longer than they need to be. A short, pithy 'new and noted', or 'in brief' section seems inconceivable. Isn't The Nation one of those publications that periodically bemoans the way the left has become alienated from young people?

Wild Things

2006-03-12T06:53:00.000-08:00

Naomi Wolf has a good article in the Times examining the disgusting 'Gossip Girl', 'Clique', and 'A-list' series aimed at teenage girls.

The great reads of adolescence have classically been critiques of the corrupt or banal adult world. It's sad if the point of reading for many girls now is no longer to take the adult world apart but to squeeze into it all the more compliantly. Sex and shopping take their places on a barren stage, as though, even for teenagers, these are the only dramas left.

A New Bookshelf

2006-03-11T18:16:00.000-08:00

Amy Schrager Lang and Cecilia Tichi, in the aftermentioned What Democracy Looks like, offer a 'post-Seattle' reading list of American literature:

Nonfiction:

Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed
Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation
Naomi Klein, No Logo
Joseph T. Hallinan, Going Up the River
Laurie Garrett, Betrayal of Trust
Walter Mosley, Workin' on the Chain Gang

Drama:
Anna Deveare Smith, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992
Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo, Guantanamo
Tony Kushner, Angels in America

Poetry
Against Forgetting
Philip Levine, What Work is
Spencer Reece, The Clerk's Tale
Wesley McNair, My Brother Running
Frank X. Walker, Affrilachia

Fiction
Andre Dubus III, House of Sand and Fog
Barry Lopez, Resistance
Jean-Christophe Rufin, Globalia
M.T. Anderson, Feed
William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
John Le Carre, The Constant Gardener
Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
Robert Newman, The Fountain at the Center of the World

(Paranthetically (obviously), this essay mistakes the Yes Men's Granyth Hulatheri for an authentic WTO spokesperson, and misspells Cornel West and Errol Morris--but nobody's perfect)

2006-03-10T12:14:00.000-08:00

Dissident Voice reader David Patten alerted me to James
Loewen's Sundown Towns .

From Publishers Weekly

According to bestselling sociologist Loewen (Lies My
Teacher Told Me),"something significant has been left
out of the broad history of race in America as it is
usually taught," namely the establishment between
1890 and 1968 of thousands of "sundown towns" that
systematically excluded African-Americans from living
within their borders.

Another book along these lines is When Affirmative Action was White
by Ira Katznelson. Liberals should move away from arguing that
Affirmative Action is a response (only) to
the legacy of slavery, but instead emphasize the way government and
civil society policies since the end of the civil war often limited
African American economic opportunity.

2006-03-07T12:22:00.000-08:00

Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, authors of The Global Political Economy of Israel, have accused Retort of plagiarism, both in their London Review of Books article, "No Blood for Oil?" and in their book, Afflicted Powers. I've read through "The Scientist and the Church", and, indeed, there are definitely some places where Retort seems to have slid over the line, incorporating their data and theoretical formulations without due credit, although in other places there appears to be the phenomenon where if you read a work too closely you sometimes unconsciously incorporate its phraseology. Some of their derision of Retort seems like it is based more on theoretical differences than anger at thievery. And their discussion of Marxism and Postmodernism is a little daft. Retort should reply somewhere. Reviews of Afflicted Powers and The Global Political Economy of Israel on Amazon reiterate these charges--probably more people see those than the essays published about Afflicted Powers in New Left Review.

Dissident Voice

2006-03-07T06:49:00.000-08:00

I have a review today (actually under March 6) of Biz War and the Out of Power Elite on Dissident Voice. So, Hello Dissident Voice readers!

New and Noted

2006-03-04T19:28:00.000-08:00

What Democracy Looks Like. From the back cover: "The convergence of activists in Seattle... marked the first major expression on U.S. soil of worldwide opposition to inequality, privatization, and political and intellectual repression. This turing point in world politics coincided with an ongoing quandary in academia... where the so-called 'death of theory' has left the (humanities) on tenuous footing. .. What Democracy Looks like... argues that these crises--in the world and the academy--are related... The narrative, the poem, the essay, and the dramatic arts need to be reexamined in ways that are relevant to the urgent social and political issues of our time." Essays by Jameson, Denning, Lipsitz, Tony Kushner, among others.

The Penguin Brokeback Mountain

2006-03-04T15:15:00.000-08:00

Parents upset about the 'gay Penguin' story And Tango Makes Three demand it be moved to the 'nonfiction' portion of the library. I'm so tired of conservatives who believe the world should be rearranged to 'protect' their children from (take your pick) gays, interracial couples, non-Christians, etc. etc.

For God and Country

2006-03-03T10:03:00.000-08:00

Review of former army captain and Muslim chaplain James Yee's autobiography in Asia Times today. Yee was accused of espionage.

As part of his responsibility as Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo, Yee reported up the chain of command on various practices he deemed in contravention of the US Army's standard operating procedures and American values. He believes he was targeted because of those reports.

The review concludes:

Yee's autobiography amply demonstrates the huge gap between the lofty rhetoric of the Bush administration about its "war on terror" and the practical realities that many Muslims are feeling around the world. After September 11, Yee was dedicated to doing everything he could to reduce the gulf of misunderstanding about Islam and Muslims. He was thrown in prison and had his career ruined for his efforts.

Beyond Chutzpah

2006-03-02T08:14:00.000-08:00

Norman Finkelstein on Middle East Journal's review of Beyond Chutzpah:

(Marc) Saperstein wonders why University of California Press published my book. The obvious answer would seem to be that it both passed an unprecedentedly rigorous peer review process and met the press's rigorous publication standards. In a sane intellectual culture the only questions would be: Why did MEJ commission a review from Saperstein, and why did he agree to do it? His only qualification for reviewing my book would seem to be that for many years he sat on the Board of Directors of Harvard Hillel and was a colleague of Dershowitz. Readers of MEJ would have been better served if the editors had exercised minimum professional responsibility rather than let their pages be used for a transparent--not to mention slightly ridiculous--hatchet job.

2006-02-27T15:39:00.000-08:00

R.I.P. Octavia Butler

Death of Discourse

2006-02-26T09:36:00.000-08:00

Robert Jensen has a review of Ronald K.L. Collins' and David M. Skover's The Death of Discourse in Counterpunch.

As they phrase the questions: "If today's First Amendment represents a way of life, what kind of life? If it represents freedom, what kind of freedom? And if it represents the triumph of democracy, what kind of democracy?"

Bush Reads Crichton

2006-02-19T19:16:00.000-08:00

Fred Barnes claims that Bush met with Michael Crichton, author of the ultimate crackpot thriller denunciation of global warming, State of Fear, and "talked for an hour and were in near-total agreement." The only thing that raises questions about the accuracy of this story is the claim that Bush "avidly read" State of Fear. Hard to picture him reading anything avidly besides "My Pet Goat".

Alfred McCoy on Democracy Now!

2006-02-17T10:36:00.000-08:00

Alfred McCoy, author of “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror” is featured on Democracy Now! today. He emphasizes the long term roots, the efficacy and pain of so called 'torture-lite' methods.

Al Franken's distinguished author of the day

2006-02-16T10:10:00.000-08:00

Al Franken's guest of the day: G. Gordon Liddy. I kid you not. Air America: what a waste of liberal money.

Phyllis Bennis on Democracy Now!

2006-02-15T15:26:00.000-08:00

When I got up this morning, John Perkins was already holding forth on Democracy Now! So it was only later when I listened to the entire show that I discovered Phyllis Bennis had been on earlier (got that?). Anyway, she was promoting a new book "Challenging Empire: How people, governments and the UN defy US power". Sounds like more truth, less truthiness, than John Perkins.

Perkins again

2006-02-15T06:03:00.000-08:00

Today, John Perkins is on Democracy Now!, claiming a top Brazilian official revealed the logic of Lula's turn rightward--Americans had been filming this official's exploits at parties when he was in college, and are now blackmailing him and others to do their bidding. Oh please. It's well known that Lula himself is a heavy drinker. Who in Brazil would care if some bureaucrat danced naked on tables or did a little coke in college? You don't need dark plots of seducing people like Perkins with money and women. Everyone knows that if you get in the good graces of the US there is plenty of money to be had, and with the money comes women. Nothing underhanded about this arrangement. The US doesn't need to drive disobedient finance ministers from office by revealing the possession of the secret sex tape from ten years ago. All they need to do is start a campaign in the media about how this minister is not 'moderate', is 'generating concern in the international business community', etc. and the drumbeat for his resignation will begin.

Anti-intellectualism on the American left is always leading it into these conspiratorial corners--anyone remember the 'shadow government' of the eighties? Why not direct outrage at what is right in the light of day? The US doesn't make a secret about bullying countries to do its bidding. Here is a headline from the Times, dated February 13: US and Israel are said to talk of Hamas' ouster. Today there is a followup story US and Israel deny plans to Drive Hamas from power. The lead sentence is "American and Israeli officials warned again Tuesday that they would cut off aid and transfers of tax receipts to a Hamas-led Palestinian government if it did not renounce violence and recognize Israel". All that's being denied is that this is an attempt to drive Hamas out, although it is difficult to see how this is not the case.

US power could never function globally without the active complicity of thousands of elites in hundreds of countries. The idea of a secretive network directly controlled by the US is convenient for a number of groups on the left, in the US and elsewhere. This does not mean it is true. How sad that Democracy Now! has fallen for this pseudo-oracle.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

2006-02-12T10:43:00.000-08:00

John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man continues to sell well, settling into the paperback top ten. Put me on record as suspecting there may be a bit of a James Frey story here, given that Perkins, previously the author of such works as Shapeshifting: Techniques for Personal and Global Transformation, has repackaged the well-known fact that the US bullies countries to do its financial bidding as a mysterious, cloak and dagger tale.

Chris Patten's 'Chutzpah'

2006-02-12T07:49:00.000-08:00

The New York Times is at its worst when it brings in a hack from the Hoover Institute to sniff out antisemitism among 'establishment' European opinion:

The prime target of Patten's rapier is American neoconservatives who "considered George H. W. Bush's policies, particularly his failure to topple Saddam Hussein, anemic and deficient in chutzpah." They "strongly supported" Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud Party and clamored for a rematch against Hussein. Why the Yiddish "chutzpah"? Why not "guts" or "resolve"? So that we would know who "they" are, those clever manipulators who had subverted the American national interest? Patten could not have meant Bush and Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld, who probably don't even know what chutzpah is. At any rate, their world was "dangerous to us all because, in Edmund Burke's famous phrase, 'a great empire and little minds go ill together.' "

Its amazing how the 'liberal establishment' in the US can't even tolerate a little criticism from those people in the world who constitute its most natural allies. Of course, the Times rarely even bothers to acknowledge that there is a world of opinion beyond the US and Europe quite a bit more critical than Chris Patten (please note: whatever its supposed ethno-religious significance, the use of the word 'chutzpah' in the Chris Patten quote above is entirely incorrect, since this is never a desirable characteristic in people).

The Color of Disaster

2006-02-08T10:51:00.000-08:00

Michael Eric Dyson has the first book out on the Katrina disaster. At least it looks like the first book. One can never be sure. But it looks good.

Betty Friedan

2006-02-07T02:18:00.000-08:00

The New York Times obituary for Betty Friedan graciously includes this quote from its original review of The Feminine Mystique:

Writing in The New York Times Book Review in April 1963, Lucy Freeman
called "The Feminine Mystique" a "highly readable, provocative book," but went
on to question its basic premise, writing, of Ms. Friedan:
"Sweeping
generalities, in which this book necessarily abounds, may hold a certain amount
of truth but often obscure the deeper issues. It is superficial to blame the
'culture' and its handmaidens, the women's magazines, as she does. What is to
stop a woman who is interested in national and international affairs from
reading magazines that deal with those subjects? To paraphrase a famous line,
'The fault, dear Mrs. Friedan, is not in our culture, but in ourselves.' "

If a collection were made of Times reviews of the important works of the last hundred years, you'd find the Times missed the boat about 85% of the time.

Hugh Miles on Democracy Now!

2006-02-02T11:06:00.000-08:00

Democracy Now! has an interesting discussion with Hugh Miles, author of Al Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged the News.

Interesting stuff:

But in those early days Al Jazeera made a conscious decision that it wasn't just going to entertain the likes of Saddam Hussein; it was going to welcome onto its show all kinds of groups who before had been excluded in the Middle East. For example, Al Jazeera invited on Israelis. This was an absolutely fundamental change from anything which had happened before, because Israelis were banned from Arab TV. Most Arabs had never seen an Israeli speak before, and here they were on Al Jazeera presenting their case in their own words, and of course Arabs were astounded. They were amazed. They couldn't believe it, and they were very suspicious, as well. They thought, you know, this has got to be a plot. You know, the C.I.A. are behind this. This is run by Mossad.

But it wasn't just the Israelis. Al Jazeera invited on Colonel Qaddafi. They invited on bin Laden -- or they showed bin Laden videos, rather, they didn't invite him on the show. They had on Saddam Hussein. They had on Hamas. They had on Hezbollah, groups who are very, very important in Middle Eastern politics, but who had always been denied airtime on other Arab channels, because the national Arabic channels, government channels, which had come before, had always regarded these groups as too pernicious an influence.

Read or listen here.

Zizek! The smartest candidate

2006-01-31T13:04:00.000-08:00

I caught the excellent documentary Zizek!, about, guess who, the other night. A particularly striking incident: In 1990, Zizek ran for president of Slovenia. They showed a televised debate where the moderator said something like 'we know your IQ is probably equal to everyone else here (about six people) combined--but can you let the others talk a little more?' Zizek explained to the filmmaker that immediately after this incident, his place in the polls jumped. What a contrast to the US! If a US candidate was ever described as smart, he would spend the next week urgently trying to prove that he's really just a stupid guy like everyone else.

Gospel of Wealth vs. the Gospel of Work

2006-01-25T10:03:00.000-08:00

Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman belatedly celebrate Dimitra Doukas' Worked Over: The Corporate Sabotage of an American Community, one of the major overlooked books of the last couple of years.

2006-01-23T13:18:00.000-08:00

Just a note about James Frey, who's a little off-topic for my purposes. Fraudsters, whether writing about recovery or weapons of mass destruction, are usually easy to detect by people with some real knowledge of the topic. The bigger scandal is always why nobody bothers to consult them before the story blows up in everyone's faces.

Osama's Book Club

2006-01-23T12:53:00.000-08:00

William Blum takes an endorsement from Osama Bin Laden in
stride.

From Blum's end of the conversations, you could tell the reporters were
expecting him to express some kind of discomfort, remorse, maybe even shame.
Blum refused to acknowledge feelings he did not have.
"I was not turned off by such an endorsement," he informed a New York radio station. "I'm not repulsed, and I'm not going to pretend I am." He patiently reiterated the thesis of his foreign-policy critique -- that American interventions abroad create enemies.
On a more serious note, this comment, like the 'My Pet Goat' anecdote from Farenheit 9-11 that he referenced last year, raises serious questions about whether Bin Laden writes his own material, something reporters would learn if they talked to Bruce Lawrence.