openDemocracy: Turkey's political opening
By Gunes Murat Tezcur
http://www.opendemocracy.net/node/34130/print
The centre-right AKP, formed by members of an earlier and explicitly Islamist party, thus reinforces its position as the single most authoritative force in Turkish politics. It increased its share of the vote by 13% (to 47%) compared with the election of November 2002 when it was elected to office, and will control 340 of the 550 seats in parliament (a slight reduction thanks to the niceties of voting distribution). If now it can translate its popular mandate into a concerted project of political reform, Turkey may emerge as the only Muslim-majority country in the middle east where secularism and democracy coexist. This will in turn facilitate Turkey's long-sought entry to the European Union and make the country a stabilising force in regional affairs.
IHT: Review: The Secret History Of The American Empire
By John Perkins. 365 pages. $25.95. Dutton
Review by Joe Queenan
http://iht.com/articles/2007/07/13/arts/idbriefs14C.php
Yet even though Perkins is perhaps the nicest person to come along since Alcuin of York, his book is not without its flaws. Because so many of the anecdotes and even the general outline of Perkins's conspiracy theories date from the '60s, a better title might have been "Rip Van Winkle Versus the Trilateral Commission." The author also has a tendency to play fast and loose with the facts, skating over Castro's myriad crimes in Cuba and Mao's festive homicide in China. He is weak on American history, somehow confusing the monstrously inhospitable Iroquois tribes with the Little Sisters of the Poor. He describes Che Guevara's death in ludicrously dramatic terms, when in fact this trendsetter, fashion plate and full-service psychopath came to a clownish end. He seems to believe that the C.I.A., having murdered the democratically elected presidents of Chile and Ecuador, then put Linda Tripp on the payroll in a plot to destroy Bill Clinton - and frankly, this sounds a bit far-fetched. He suggests that the first President Bush invaded Panama because Manuel Noriega had incriminating photos of George W. Bush snorting cocaine and engaging in kinky sex. If only history were this much fun!
The reviewer is a little too hard on Perkins. This is actually an agitprop book you can really love. Listening to the guy on Democracy Now, its all very seductive. And, truth be told, surely contains much that scholars of today's resurgent primitive accumulation need to know about. Its all very well to go after the book for its presentation of facts. Similarly, it can be criticized for its lack of theoretical rigor. But the author is neither historian nor theoretician. It was written as agitprop and must be appraised as such. Moreover, much of its content is consistent with requests from neomarxist scholars for more data on just how the empire is being run on the front lines... This is largely anecdotal but I don't think that necessarily disqualifies its usefulness.
Borders, language, and the future of European integration: insights from the 19th century Habsburg Empire
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/362
Max-Stephan Schulze
Nikolaus Wolf
7 July 2007
The key hypothesis concerns the importance of ethno-linguistic networks for trade. If ethno-linguistic networks were an important factor, then the intensification of networks among members of the same ethno-linguistic group, and the simultaneous decline of transportation costs, should have produced a border effect inside the Empire. That is, all else equal, two cities with little or no ethno-linguistic differences will tend to trade more with each other than cities with larger differences.
Cyberspace Author William Gibson Touting Latest Novel in Second Life
William Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" in his novel Neuromancer. So it's fitting that Gibson's latest book, Spook Country, will be promoted in cyberspace -- in Second Life, to be exact.