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International Relations

Vaclav Havel and Nobel Laureates Call for the Release of Imprisoned Burmese Writers

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June-July 2004, no. 262

Fourteen Nobel Literature Laureates – along with Vaclav Havel, former President of the Czech Republic and renowned playwright, and Jiri Grusa, acclaimed Czech writer and President of International PEN – have urged Senior General Than Shwe of the Burmese Military Junta to release Nobel Peace Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other imprisoned Burmese writers. These include 74-year-old editor U Win Tin, who is serving twenty years’ hard labour, and poet and journalist U Aung Myint, who was condemned to twenty-one years’ imprisonment. In a letter delivered to Burmese embassies in Bangkok, Berlin, London, New Delhi, Tokyo, Washington DC and other cities on April 13, Havel and the Laureates wrote:

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Where Are We in the War on Terrorism

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May 2004, no. 261

It is hard to avoid the assessment that the most visible product to date of the war on terrorism has been nothing much more, or less, than more war and more terror. The unhappy reality since September 11 seems to be that all our major cities, and concentrations of Westerners anywhere, are as vulnerable as ever; the capacity of terrorist actors to do harm is as great as ever; their motivations are as great as ever; their identity is as elusive as ever; international cooperation is as fragile as ever; and international policy priorities are as misplaced as ever.

In Iraq, where the terrorist connection was the least plausible of all the reasons for going to war, terrorist violence has now become the most harrowing of all its consequences. The significance of Richard Clarke’s evidence to the September 11 Commission is not what the former anti-terrorism chief had to say, with all the wisdom that hindsight confers, about the failure of either Republican or Democrat administrations to take more effective action before September 11; rather, it is about the decision after September 11 to attack Iraq, a country that had about as much to do with it as Mexico, creating in the process the most expensive recruitment campaign for Islamist extremism ever launched.

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The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, secrecy, and the end of the republic by Chalmers Johnson

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May 2004, no. 261
Dennis Altman reviews 'The Sorrows of Empire' by Chalmers Johnson

Chalmers Johnson, who began his career in the US Navy and became a consultant to the CIA, is one of the most respected American experts on East Asia and international affairs. Over the past few years, he has emerged as a significant academic critic of the Bush administration, and what he sees as a dangerously reckless escalation of US imperialism and militarism.

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Islam by F. E. Peters & Islam and the West by Amin Saikal

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February 2004, no. 258

Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979, the disintegration and demise of the Soviet Empire a decade later, and the attacks in New York and Washington in 2001 have all heightened interest in ‘understanding’ Islam in the West. The Iranian Revolution was very much a revolution of the ‘countryside’ against the glitter, domination and corrupt politics of the ‘metropolis’. Its success created an enormous interest in Islam. For the West, the demise of the USSR was more than the demise of what Ronald Reagan had dubbed an ‘Evil Empire’; it removed the ‘enemy’ whose containment had dominated the politics of the Cold War in the US and its European allies. Its historical significance was described by the American political scientist Francis Fukayama in his influential essay ‘The End of History’. The search was on for the enemies of international capitalism and liberal democracy. A few years later, in an equally influential and widely read work, The Clash of Civilizations (1993), Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington identified Islam as one of the potential enemies of Western civilisation.

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Fact or Fission?: The truth about Australia's nuclear ambitions by Richard Broinowski

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February 2004, no. 258
Wayne Reynolds reviews 'Fact or Fission?' by Richard Broinowski

Richard Broinowski, a retired senior diplomat who has served in seven legations, three as ambassador, has long been interested in matters nuclear, as this excellent work demonstrates. Broinowski traces Australian nuclear developments from the early days of World War II to the most recent developments under Prime Minister John Howard. In the process, he chronicles Australian nuclear ambitions, from the early flirtations with acquiring a nuclear weapon and its related strike capability, to the later development of uranium exports.

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A Suitable Piece of Real Estate by Desmond Ball

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May 1981, no. 30
Irwin Herrman reviews 'A Suitable Piece of Real Estate' by Desmond Ball

Finding the answers is often not half as important as asking the right questions. Desmond Ball has written an important book even though he raises more fundamental questions than he answers.

The central question in A Suitable Piece of Real Estate is simply ‘What are the rights and responsibilities of a host country which allows installations of a foreign, albeit, friendly state, to be sited on its territory?’ The author has dedicated the book For a Sovereign Australia. Australia is the host country in question, with American defence, scientific, and intelligence installations on its territory; but the situation he describes in great detail could, and probably does, apply elsewhere.

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Australian-American Relations: The Web of Dependence by Jospeh A. Camilleri

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March 1981, no. 28
Ralph Summy reviews 'Australian-American Relations' by Joseph A. Camilleri

Virtually every book examining the whole or part of Australia’s postwar foreign policy has taken the American connection as its focal point. Camilleri, a prolific scholar and well-known commentator on international politics, however, shifts the emphasis and integrates some new dimensions. Instead of centring his study on the isolated aims of Australian policy-makers, he assesses the relationship within the framework of the major partner’s global strategy. The first critical factors to isolate are the changing needs and capabilities of the world’s leading capitalist nation; how have the Americans perceived their interests and responded in a dynamic global environment?

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Chinese Shadows by Simon Leys

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September 1978, no. 4
Colin Mackerras reviews 'Chinese Shadows' by Simon Leys

‘The masses are the real heroes, while we ourselves are often childish and ignorant, and without this understanding it is impossible to acquire even the most rudimentary knowledge’(Mao Tse-tung, 1941) Except for the word ‘often’, which Simon Leys would wish to be replaced by ‘always’, this statement is one with which he would agree, because by ‘we ourselves’ Mao means the Chinese Communist Party. In this book, which deals with China in the early 1970s, Leys appears preoccupied with four major concerns: (1) He is a deep lover of the Chinese people (2) He hates intensely everything connected with ‘the authorities’. In his view, everything good about China is due to the people, everything bad to their government.

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