ABARBANEL. “Beyond Tribal Loyalties. Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists” by Avigail Abarbanel.
“Ex-Israeli psychologist Avigail Abarbanel’s “Beyond Tribal Loyalties. Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists” is an important, must-read anthology of the views of 25 anti-racist Jews, who variously, from positions ranging from pro-Zionism to a-political apathy, overcame my-lot-right-or-wrong tribal loyalty and came to realize the immense crime being committed against the Palestinian people and their obligation to speak out for Palestinian human rights. Of course this conversion has also happened for many non-Jewish as well as Jewish anti-racists who have been brainwashed by decades of Neocon and Zionist imperialist propaganda purveyed by the Mainstream media in the Western Murdochracies, Lobbyocracies and Corporatocracies, this being reinforced by the ferocious defamation by endlessly lying Zionist propagandists who falsely label all critics of Apartheid Israel as “anti-Semites” and additionally falsely defame Jewish critics of this genocidal Apartheid state as “self-hating Jews”. The awful reality is that Israel is now a nuclear terrorist, racist Zionist-run, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid state in which the human rights of its now 52% majority Palestinian subjects are variously grossly violated. 73% of the Palestinian subjects of Apartheid Israel are not permitted to vote for the government ruling them – Apartheid indeed. All decent folk will applaud the honesty and courage of the 25 anti-racist Jewish contributors to this fine book (see Gideon Polya, “Beyond Tribal Loyalties - anti-racist Jews condemn racist Zionism”, Amazon, September 14, 2016: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2OMJZZO8KMH3D/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv and https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Tribal-Loyalties-Personal-Activists/dp/1443837962 ).
AL-ANI. “ Genocide in Iraq Volume I: The Case Against the UN Security Council and Member States” by Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tarik Al-Ani (foreword by Professor Joshua Castellino):
“Genocide in Iraq . The case against the UN Security Council and member states” by Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tarik Al-Ani (foreword by Professor Joshua Castellino; Clarity Press, Atlanta, USA) is an extremely important book that sets out the case for prosecution of people involved in the Zionist-backed, US-spearheaded, oil-driven genocide in Iraq during the period of Sanctions (1990-2003). Of course, as recognized by the authors, the carnage continued after the illegal US-led invasion and occupation. However the authors have chosen here to limit consideration to the horrendous effects of Sanctions because they were UN sanctioned, and in being associated with an estimated 1.7 million Iraqi avoidable deaths from deprivation (1990-2003; substantially children; an Iraqi Holocaust and an Iraqi Genocide) violated the intent and letter of international law and international humanitarian conventions devised to protect non-combatants and children. This book should be in every state, city, local, school and university library so that everyone throughout the world (and especially children) can see for themselves the horrendous consequences of mass collective punishment of civilian populations to achieve political and strategic ends i.e. of state terrorism or more precisely, collective state terrorism. Note that Holocaust means death of a huge number of people and Genocide is defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”. In 2016 the active and passive killing of Iraqis continues. Alan Greenspan, the leading Republican economist for a generation and chairman of the US Federal Reserve for almost two decades, stated (2007) : “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil” (see Gideon Polya, “UN-approved Genocide in Iraq under pre-invasion Sanctions (1990-2003) - post-invasion the Iraqi Genocide continues”, Amazon, September 14, 2016: https://www.amazon.com/review/R3VHYBRZ5I5BBO/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv and https://www.amazon.com/Genocide-Iraq-Against-Security-Council/dp/0985335300 ).
AL-ANI. “Genocide in Iraq Volume II: The Obliteration of a Modern State” by Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tariq Al-Ani.
“Genocide in Iraq Volume II: The Obliteration of a Modern State” by Dr Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tariq Al-Ani is a carefully documented, must-read account of the Zionist-backed US Alliance destruction of Iraq and the active and passive killing of millions of Iraqis over the last quarter century for oil, US hegemony and for military dominance of the Middle East by a nuclear-armed, genocidally racist Apartheid Israel. This is a damning case that everyone should read to prevent recurrence (history ignored yields history repeated) and for ultimate legal recourse and Nuremberg-style justice for the Iraqi people. Western Mainstream media utterly ignore expert assessments of how many people the US Alliance has killed in Iraq and resolutely ignore the crucial epidemiological concept of non-violent avoidable deaths associated with hegemony- , sanctions- or war-imposed deprivation. Thus, by way of example, on the occasion of US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 the Australian ABC (Australia's equivalent of the UK BBC) reported that “The withdrawal ends a war that left tens of thousands of Iraqis and nearly 4,500 American soldiers dead". In contrast, the expert and eminent US Just Foreign Policy organization estimates, based on the data of expert UK analysts and top US medical epidemiologists, 1.5 million violent Iraqi deaths in the Iraq War (2003-2011), and UN data indicate a further 1.2 million Iraqi avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation in this period, for a total of 2.7 million deaths. Iraqi deaths from violence (1.7 million) and war-imposed deprivation (2.9 million) since 1990 total 4.6 million. However it gets worse. One can estimate from Iraqi population data that Iraqi avoidable deaths from deprivation under British occupation and hegemony from 1914-1950 totalled about 4 million. Thus ignoring Iraqi deaths associated with the US-backed Iraq-Iran War, one can estimate about 9 million Iraqi deaths from UK or US violence and imposed deprivation in the century after the 1914 invasion of Iraq by Britain – an Iraqi Genocide, indeed, and a shocking price for cheap oil” (Gideon Polya, "Genocide in Iraq: the Obliteration of a Modern State" demands Nuremberg-style justice for the Iraqi people”, Amazon, 15 Sept. 2016: https://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R3GKYOPZYWYU3G/ref=pe_1572281_66412651_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv and https://www.amazon.co.uk/Genocide-Iraq-II-Obliteration-Modern/dp/0986076929/ref=cm_rdp_product ).
CAPUTI, Ross, HIL, Richard & MULHEARN, Donna. "The Sacking Of Fallujah. A People’s History” by Ross Caputi, Richard Hil, and Donna Mulhearn.
The beautiful, ancient and populous Iraqi city of Fallujah (the City of Mosques) in Iraq’s Anbar province suffered 13 years of US-enforced sanctions, and then 3 bloody sieges and 2 substantial demolitions or sackings at the hands of the genocidally racist, serial war criminal and child-killing American invaders. This appalling atrocity cries out for justice and is documented in the must-read book “The Sacking Of Fallujah. A People’s History” by Ross Caputi (US Iraq War veteran), Richard Hil (British Australian sociologist) and Donna Mulhearn (Australian journalist and human rights activist).
Each chapter concludes with shocking stories of survivors (People’s stories), and the stories of children are particularly upsetting. This must-read book should be in every library as a cry for justice and a memo to a God-less, self-absorbed and serial war criminal America: “Thou shalt not kill children”. 4.6 million Iraqis died from violence (1.7 million) or from imposed deprivation (2.9 million) under Sanctions and Occupation (1990-2011), 9 million thus since the British invasion for oil in 1914.
Thus 13-year old Iraqi girl, Sarah, whose family were refugees to a Baghdad refugee camp from the first US demolition of Fallujah (2004): “What does America want from us? Why did they destroy our homes? This is not their home, this is our home. Why did they come here and force us to live like this? The bombing went all day and all night. They made us homeless, they made us wander from house to house to ask if anyone can help us. Why did they come here? I want them to go”
Decent, humane people around the world must (a) penetrate the Mainstream Media Wall of Silence and tell everyone they can about the ongoing, blood-for-oil Iraqi Genocide, and (b) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all people, politicians, parties, companies, corporations and countries complicit in the ongoing Iraqi Genocide and the ongoing Muslim Genocide and Muslim Holocaust (see Gideon Polya, “Review: “The Sacking Of Fallujah. A People’s History” – Ongoing Iraqi Genocide”, Countercurrents, 30 January 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/01/review-the-sacking-of-fallujah-a-peoples-history-ongoing-iraqi-genocide ).
ELLIS. “Rationalism. A critique of pure theory” by Brian Ellis.
Professor Brian Ellis (Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University and Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne, Australia) is a leading Australian philosopher, and 5 years ago published an important book entitled ”Social Humanism.A New Metaphysics” (Routledge, UK, 2012). I published a detailed review of this book in MWC News (Gideon Polya, “Review: “Social Humanism. A New Metaphysics” by Brian Ellis”, MWC News, 18 August 2012 ).
This important book set out a theory for the social humanism of the welfare state, empirically arguably the most successful current social system as evidenced by Scandinavia, Western Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Ellis advanced social humanism (socialism, democratic socialism, eco-socialism, the welfare state) as an alternative to the extremes of communism and neo-liberalism.
Neoliberalism, that presently holds sway in the world, demands maximal freedom for the smart and advantaged to exploit the physical and human resources of the world for private profit, with an asserted “trickle down” of benefit to the less smart and less advantaged. In stark contrast, social humanism aims to sustainably maximize happiness, opportunity and dignity for everybody through evolving national and international social contracts.
In 2017 Brian Ellis has published a further book, ““Rationalism. A critique of pure theory” that contrasts the marvellous successes of “rationalism” in science (involving the proving of mathematical models of reality from starting a priori axioms) with the massive failure of asserted “economic rationalism” (also known as neoliberalism) as evidenced by a huge and ever-increasing wealth gap between rich and poor, mounting intergenerational injustice, and the worsening and indeed existential climate emergency. (Gideon Polya, “”Rationalism” by Brian Ellis slams neoliberalism”, MWC News, 8 October 2017: http://mwcnews.com/focus/analysis/68564-rationalism-by-brian-ellis.html ).
ELLIS. “The New Enlightenment. On Steven Pinker & beyond” by Brian Ellis.
“The New Enlightenment. On Steven Pinker & beyond” by Australian philosopher Professor Brian Ellis (including 3 invited specialist essays from other scholars) argues that the 17th century onwards Enlightenment that replaced superstition, dogma, subjugation and subservience with science, reason, freedom and human rights, has led to huge improvements in the human condition, but that human rights must be accompanied by human social obligations, and a New Enlightenment is urgently needed to reverse the impacts of rampant neoliberalism and indeed to save Humanity from deadly inequity and anthropogenic climate change.
Brian Ellis cogently argues that neoliberalism seeks to maximize the freedom of the smart and advantaged to exploit human and natural resources for private profit, whereas social humanism (socialism, the welfare state) seeks to maximize sustainable human happiness, opportunity and dignity for everyone through evolving intra-national and international social contracts that pragmatically take evolved cultural differences into account.
Rampant neoliberalism has led Humanity to the brink of disaster – presently each year 15 million die avoidably from deprivation, 7 million die from air pollution, and 1 million die from climate change, a catastrophic plus 2C of warming is now effectively unavoidable, national Paris Agreement commitments mean plus 3-4C, and a worsening climate genocide means 10 billion will die this century en route to a sustainable population in 2100 of only 0.5-1 billion people. Critically, if everyone had an American lifestyle we would need 7 planets.
Famed physicist Stephen Hawking: “We see great peril if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change”. Rich Australia is notably among world leaders in 15 areas of climate criminality and is inviting draconian global action – with 0.3% of the world population it is responsible for 5% of world greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution (exports included) and its annual domestic GHG pollution has been rising for 5 years. Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg’s impassioned message to the speciescidal, ecocidal and terracidal climate criminals: “How dare you!”
Contrary to the anti-globalism of US President Donald Trump and Trumpist Australian PM Scott Morrison, Professor Brian Ellis advocates an expansion of globalism and an Interim World Government element to specifically deal with critical economic equity and anthropogenic climate change issues: “If we do not do something like this, we are bound to become ruled by a consortium of international companies, who owe no allegiance to anyone, and who will, accordingly, govern the world in what they see as being in their own best interests. And as the crisis of 2008 clearly demonstrates, such a neoliberal solution is fraught with danger. Next time, there might really be a global collapse of free market capitalism, and in that case we will be looking at the near extinction of human and most animal life on earth” (see Gideon Polya, “Review: “The New Enlightenment” by Brian Ellis – World Government & Humanism to save Humanity”, Countercurrents, 7 October 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/10/review-the-new-enlightenment-by-brian-ellis-world-government-social-humanism-to-save-humanity ).
OBAMA. "Becoming " by Michelle Obama.
“Becoming” by Michelle Obama is an inspiring, feel-good story of how a working class African-American woman became a Harvard graduate, corporate lawyer, perfect mother and thence First Lady of the US. However “Becoming” has numerous extraordinary absences e.g. the Harvard Law School years, Black-targeting felony laws excluding nearly 80% of African-American male adults from voting in Chicago, the Israel Lobby and the Palestinian Genocide, 7,000 US war dead, 130,000 US veteran suicides and 30 million preventable US deaths since 9-11 in the $6 trillion US War on Terror, pro-Apartheid America, who killed Osama, the Muslim Genocide, Muslim Holocaust and egregious US violation of 12 countries under Nobel Peace Laureate Obama.
The most important things in history are often those that are not stated, the absences, holes or lacunae. Michelle Obama’s feel-good autobiography “Becoming” has many extraordinary, Elephant in the Room absences that reflect the One Percenter-dominated Mainstream American media culture of lying by omission, genocide ignoring and holocaust ignoring that profoundly deceives ordinary Americans, including Michelle Obama, and indeed most of the West. However “Becoming” can nevertheless serve the interests of Humanity if decent folk tell everyone they can about its shocking absences (see Gideon Polya, “Review: “Becoming” By Michelle Obama – Mainstream Lying, Genocide Ignoring & Holocaust Ignoring”, Countercurrents, 27 June 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/06/review-becoming-by-michelle-obama-mainstream-lying-genocide-ignoring-holocaust-ignoring ).
MATAR. “The Return. Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between” by Hisham Matar.
“The Return. Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between” by Hisham Matar is a beautifully written and moving account by a gifted expatriate Libyan writer of his assiduous, over 2 decade search to find out what happened to his father, Jaballa Matar, who was “disappeared” as a leading opponent and a secret political prisoner of the Qaddafi government in Libya. However there are some remarkable total omissions from this century-spanning account that one surmises permitted publication and lavish Mainstream praise in the endlessly censoring US and UK.
Astonishingly there is no mention of the devastation of Libya (formerly the most prosperous country in Africa) by the France, UK and US (FUKUS) Coalition in 2011; no mention of 2 million out of 6 million Libyans being forced to live outside Libya (Le Monde, 2014), an ethnic cleansing and a Libyan Genocide (UN Genocide Convention); no mention of the continuing, variously foreign-backed civil war in Libya associated with even more refugees and 1.3 million Libyans needing humanitarian assistance (UNHCR, 2017); no mention of the devastating collapse of the Libyan GDP per capita from $31,000 before the NATO invasion to $5,800 in 2016 (“Economy of Libya”); and while the Pan Am Flight 103 atrocity over Lockerbie is mentioned there is no mention of the Israeli downing of Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114.
There must be insistence on basic human rights throughout the world and a readily addressable, computer-based and detailed register of all individuals, including those hiding in the jungles and those incarcerated in prisons, detention centres, re-education camps, or refugee camps, so that nobody, great or small, Developed World or Developing World, can be abused or “disappeared” from the face of the earth without resolute international inquiry and collateral penalty that may save them from ongoing abuse or secret oblivion (Gideon Polya, “Review: “The Return” by Hisham Matar – Libyan Genocide & Seeking the Disappeared”, Countercurrents, 5 October 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/10/review-the-return-by-hisham-matar-libyan-genocide-seeking-the-disappeared .)
PINKER. “Enlightenment Now. The case for reason, science, humanism and progress” by Steven Pinker.
“Enlightenment Now” by neoliberal Canadian-American One Percenter Steven Pinker argues that the 17th century onwards European Enlightenment that promoted reason, science and humanism resulted in huge scientific, technological and moral advances with ultimately huge improvements in the human condition in many areas. However Pinker scoffs at Greens and leftists, supports the neoliberal capitalist order, and ignores horrendous realities from the current Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust (15 million deaths from deprivation annually) and the mass species extinction of the present Anthropocene Era to the worsening Climate Genocide (10 billion to die this century en route to a sustainable human population of 0.5-1.0 billion by 2100).
I have translated the 3 laws of Thermodynamics, to whit, (1) conservation of energy, (2) entropy (disorder, lack of information content) increases to a maximum, and (3) zero motion at Absolute Zero, to Polya’s 3 Laws of Economics, to whit (1) Profit = Price minus Cost of Production), (2) Deceit about Cost of Production increases to a maximum, and (3) no life, work, price or profit on a dead Planet. “We live in the best of times” Panglossian Pinker minimizes the existential threats from nuclear weapons and climate change and the need for urgent action, in stark contrast to outstanding physicist Stephen Hawking’s plea that “We see great peril if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change”.
Unfortunately, the neoliberalism that Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now” espouses violates the core Enlightenment principles of profound respect for truth, beauty, scientific method and accurate information. Thus we must not destroy what we cannot replace, any one species is accordingly priceless, and the Cost of Production in our present Gadarene, One Percenter-dominated, mendacious and anti-science neoliberal world means huge suffering and premature death for the assertedly “deficient” and “uncompetitive” Ninety Percenters, mass speciescide and mass ecocide leading the Earth towards omnicide and terracide (see Gideon Polya, “Review: “Enlightenment Now” by Steven Pinker – Climate Genocide & Avoidable Mortality Holocaust Ignored”, Countercurrents, 7 September 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/09/review-enlightenment-now-by-steven-pinker-climate-genocide-avoidable-mortality-holocaust-ignored ).
POLYA. "Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions", by Gideon Polya.
The climate change denialist Trump Administration has been replaced by the relatively sane Biden Administration, but anti-science, nationalist, exceptionalist, truth-subverting and fascoid Trumpism continues to have massive popular support in the US, and in climate criminal, pro-fossil fuels and US lackey Australia that is ruled by an effective climate change denialist, Trumpist Coalition Government enabled by a weak and compromised Labor Opposition. I have just published a huge, 846-page book in Germany entitled “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions” that describes the appalling dimensions of a Climate Crisis that is associated with climate change-exacerbated physical threats to Humanity, a massive loss of Biodiversity, the approach to or exceedance of critical tipping points, and a worsening Climate Genocide that, in the absence of requisite action, may see the avoidable death of 10 billion people this century en route to sustainable human population in 2100 of merely 1 billion. However I also provide a detailed and documented range of 38 key Solutions to this worsening disaster [1]. Unfortunately, as set out in this essay, the 2 worst countries in the world for climate action policy, the US and US lackey Australia, are crippled by the powerful fossil fuel lobby and (political rhetoric aside) ignore the existential threat posed by man-made climate change and largely ignore all but 3 of these 38 key Solutions to the worsening Climate Emergency. Yes, there is great hope that the Biden Administration will rapidly put America back on track to address the worsening Climate Crisis. Biden has moved rapidly to scrap the disastrous Canada-US Keystone XL oil pipeline, to suspend oil and gas drilling on federal lands (notably in Alaska wilderness areas), and determined that America will re-join the Paris Climate Agreement and hence global action on climate change. However that global hope is tempered by the realities of only a few votes Democrat majority in the House, Vice President Kamala Harris having the casting vote in deadlocked Senate, uncertainties from fascoid Trumpist populism in the next mid-term elections, the horrendous and worsening tragedy of the Covid-19 pandemic in America, and the innate neoliberal conservatism and fanatical religiosity of America. Further the Biden Administration supports a disastroos coal-to-gas transition (gas can actually be dirtier GHG-wise than coal) and rejects the crucial application of a science-, Elon Musk-, Pope Francis-, and IMF-demanded Carbon Price (for further details see Gideon Polya, "Climate Criminal Australia & US Ignore Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions", Climate Genocide, 7 February 2021: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/2021-02-07-gideon-polya-climate-criminal ).
WHITE. “A History of the Global Economy. The Inevitable Accident” by Colin White.
“A History of the Global Economy. The Inevitable Accident” by Colin White (2018) describes the history of the global economy through its successive stages of foraging, the Agrarian Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and the presently expanding Service Revolution economy. Ambitious and full of ideas, it will provoke lots of discussion, and in that sense this scholarly work should be in every library. Thus. it controversially suggests a rapid, epigenetics-based, neo-Lamarckian evolution of human intelligence in recent centuries, and minimizes the horrendous, de-industrializing and deadly impact of genocidal British colonialism that robbed India of $45 trillion and caused 1,800 million premature Indian deaths over 2 centuries.
Professor Colin White deserves great praise for being rare among Anglo academics in actually mentioning the “forgotten” WW2 Bengal Famine: “India had a modern communications and transport system, even if directed chiefly to the support of exports. With the exception of the Bengal famine of 1943–44, largely, although not wholly, a product of the war, the incidence of famine was reduced, with the aid of an extensive railway system”. Under the British India suffered a regular succession of disastrous famines from the Great Bengal Famine (1769-1770, 10 million killed by British rapacity) to the WW2 Bengal Famine (WW2 Indian Holocaust, WW2 Bengali Holocaust, 1942-1945, 6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death in Bihar, Orissa. Assam and Bengal by the British for strategic reasons, with Australia complicit by withholding food from it huge wartime wheat stores from its ally, starving India).
Colin White correctly states: “Independence in 1776 allowed the Americans to remove the control line for settlement fixed by the British at the Appalachian Mountains”, this enabling the subsequent American Indian Genocide. Colin White: “A negative interpretation is almost invariably put on colonial rule, whatever the agency involved and whatever the period of control… There is no dispute as bitter as that relating to the existence of an expanding Israel, created in 1949 by the United Nations at the expense of Palestine”.
Importantly, Colin White recognizes the acute problem of man-made climate change and states: “Warming is likely to be accompanied by an increased frequency and intensity of extreme events … Since the carrying capacity of the world could diminish, our Malthusian intermission may prove temporary… The potential destructiveness of global warming implies the need to impose the costs on those responsible, without allowing free-riders to take advantage of the situation” i.e. imposing a price on carbon pollution (see Gideon Polya, “Review: “A History of the Global Economy, The inevitable accident” - Indian Holocaust & Genocide Ignored”, Countercurrents, 17 February 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/02/17/review-a-history-of-the-global-economy-indian-holocaust-genocide-ignored/ ).