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Zia clarifies his timing of declaration of independence

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Anti-naxal commandos for India-Australia ODI and PM, Sonia do without bullet-proof screen, Kashmir safer!Is It? May we AVOID the Backlash against Free Market Democracy?

Anti-naxal commandos for India-Australia ODI and PM, Sonia do without bullet-proof screen, Kashmir safer!Is It? May we AVOID the Backlash against Free Market Democracy?

Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams, Chapter 412

Palash Biswas

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91 Killed in Bombing at Pakistan Market // Two injured men walk together after an explosion in Peshawar, Pakistan (© Arshad Abab/epa/Corbis)

91 Killed in Bombing at Pakistan Market

Blast coincides with Hillary Clinton's visit to country

Pagination

28/10/2009

Deadly link: FBI arrests LeT's `American Kasaab'

Washington: Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was planning to use an American national to carry out another terrorist attack -- like the one that Ajmal Kasaab and a bunch of Pakistan-trained hardcore terrotists had carried out on 26/11 -- the FBI said Tuesday.

Deadly link: FBI arrests LeT's `American Kasaab'

The man, identified as David Coleman Headley, was arrested early this month by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Joint Terrorism Task Force at O'Hare International Airport before boarding a flight to Philadelphia, intending to travel on to Pakistan.

Headley, 49, along with a Canadian citizen of Pakistani origin, have been arrested on charges of plotting a terror attack against the facilities and employees of a Danish newspaper which had published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005, federal law enforcement officials announced Tuesday.

The Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48, also known as Tahawar Rana, was also a resident of Chicago and was arrested by the FBI Oct 18.

Rana is the owner of several businesses, including First World Immigration Services, which has offices on Devon Avenue in Chicago, as well as in New York and Toronto.

According to the FBI affidavit filed in a Chicago court, Headley was in close contact with Ilyas Kashmiri and several unidentified leaders of LeT.

Kashmiri is the operational chief of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir section of Harakat-ul Jihad Islami (HUJI), a Pakistani-based terrorist organisation with links to Al Qaeda. Kashmiri, who is presently believed to be in Pakistan's restive Waziristan tribal region, issued a statement this month that he was alive and working with Al Qaeda.

http://news.in.msn.com/international/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3313310
 

New armed wing of PCPA behind Rajdhani hijack drama

Kolkata: A newly-raised armed wing of tribal agitators, aided by Maoists in West Midnapore district, were responsible for the seven-and-a-half half hour hijack drama of the Delhi-bound Rajdhani Express in a jungle area of West Midnapore district.

"The way the incident took place yesterday doesn't suggest that it was planned and executed entirely by Maoists.

They were definitely present during the incident, but they didn't participate," a source in the joint forces engaged in anti-Maoist operations in the district told PTI on condition of anonymity.

"The Maoists also provided covering fire when the joint forces were trying to go from Jhargram to the trouble spot, Banstala. Their intention was to resist us so that the tribal agitators could leave the spot safely," the source said.

The name of the PCPA's armed wing, according to the district police, was 'Sidhu-Kanu Gana Militia'.

Source: PTI

 More than 80 people were killed in one of the most horrific terror attacks in Pakistan this year when a massive bomb blast tore through a bustling market here Wednesday, shortly after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began a three-day trip to the country.

Pakistan Bleeds and the BLOOD Stains COVER the ENVIRONMENT which we share in the divided Geopolitics Turned into an INFINITE war zone in defence of zionist US Interests!

Anti-naxal commandos for India-Australia ODI as A crack team of anti-naxalite commandos has been roped to provide security cover to the Indian and Australian cricket teams at the Vidarbha Cricket Association (VCA) stadium in Jamatha, where the second ODI match held Wednesday.


Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said here Wednesday that he felt the situation in his state was improving as both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi did not use a bullet-proof screen while addressing the people.

Is it TRUE? Omar Abdullah is a young Politician with very Positive MIND Set and we must welcome his gesture! But facts remain quite different as the Soth Asian geopolitics is UNDERMINED by the US War Economy and our Political Social Hegemomy led by India Incs and MNCs, LPG mafia obliges the TRI Iblis Zionist corporate Galaxy imperialism. Free market Democracy promotion led the MONOPLISTIC Aggression and MINORITY Dominating Foreign Origin brahaminical Communities amass Shocking Wealth depriving the Majority have Not Masses. Back lash may not be avoided in any circumstances and it is the hard hitting reality which leads to TERROR, Anarchy and Ethnonationalism and we REPLICATE Latin America, Africa and south east Asia in a status of CIVIL War and Insurgency!

As part of the tight arrangements for the day-night One Day International (ODI), police have beefed up security measures and commandos have been requisitioned from naxal-hit areas for a day, police sources said.

Police will be using night vision devices to detect any wrong doings in and around the new stadium for the first day-night encounter between India and Australia in Nagpur, they said.

"Today I felt for the first time that things have changed here since the prime minister and the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) chairperson would not be addressing people from behind a bullet-proof screen," he said.

Abdullah stressed on finding a permanent solution to the Kashmir problem.

"The basic problem of Jammu and Kashmir is not merely an economic one, but is linked to our politics," he said.

"If we want to rid the state of the menace of the gun, we must find a permanent solution to political problem here," Abdullah said here while welcoming Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, who are on a two-day visit to the Valley.

The prime minister Wednesday flagged off a new train service on the 18-km track linking south Kashmir with Srinagar and other places in the north of the valley. With this, the 129-km railway line in the Kashmir Valley is complete.

Abdullah thanked the prime minister and Home Minister P. Chidambaram for announcing a political dialogue between the state and the central government.

"My government will try everything possible to help the dialogue process so that tears from the eyes of the people are wiped out," the chief minister said.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Wednesday reached out to Pakistan, saying "the hand of friendship that we have extended should be carried forward", but declared that Islamabad had to turn off the terror tap if there was to be forward movement.

Calling on Pakistan to show "sincerity and good faith", the prime minister said India would not be found wanting in response as this was in the interests of the people of both countries.

"I call upon the people and government of Pakistan to show their sincerity and good faith. As I have said many times before, we will not be found wanting in our response," Manmohan Singh said addressing a mammoth gathering in Anantnag before flagging off a long-promised train service linking the south and north of the Kashmir Valley.

"I appeal to the government of Pakistan that the hand of friendship that we have extended should be carried forward. This is in the interest of people of India and Pakistan.

The 'hand of friendship' gesture was the second time that an Indian prime minister was extending to Pakistan. It was former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's famous 'hand of friendship' speech in Srinagar at a public rally in April 2003 that led to his historic visit there in January 2004.


Meanwhile, India today made clear its opposition to China''s participation in projects in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, saying it treats any such activity as "illegal". External Affairs Minister S M Krishna said India has also taken up with China the matter relating to issuance of visas to Kashmiris on loose sheets instead of passports and asked it to apply uniform visa norm for all Indian nationals.

"Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India. Any activity by any country in Jammu and Kashmir is illegal and this has been made known to all concerned," Krishna told reporters here in response to a question about Chinese participation in developmental projects in PoK. China is assisting Pakistan in building a mega power project and construction of a highway in Karakoram range in PoK. Chinese President Hu Jintao, during his meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani in Beijing recently, emphasised his country''s commitment to these projects.

Krishna, who held talks with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi here yesterday, said the matter relating to issuance of visas to Kashmiris was discussed. "They (Chinese side) said they made no discrimination.

We are insisting that there should be a uniform visa norm for Indian nationals," Krishna said. To a poser about India not being seen as assertive vis-a-vis China, he said New Delhi seeks relations with everyone as equal and based on mutual respect, regardless of any nation''s economic or military might.

Peshawar bombing kills 87, injures 200
Peshawar: More than 80 people were killed in one of the most horrific terror attacks in Pakistan this year when a massive bomb blast tore through a bustling market here Wednesday, shortly after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began a three-day trip to the country.

28/10/2009Peshawar bombing kills 87, injures 200
Peshawar: More than 80 people were killed in one of the most horrific terror attacks in Pakistan this year when a massive bomb blast tore through a bustling market here Wednesday, shortly after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began a three-day trip to the country.

 

Pakistani chief protocol officer Ghalib Iqbal (centre) greets US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (left) upon her arrival at the Chaklala military airbase in Rawalpindi on Wednesday. AFP

As doctors battled to save several of the seriously injured in hospitals, North West Frontier Province (NWFP) officials said many of the 200 injured could succumb to their injuries. Hospital sources told The News that 87 people had been killed in the blast.

Pakistani media reported that a building in the congested locality of Meena Bazar collapsed. A mosque bore the brunt. The windows of buildings were shattered. Several vehicles and around 15 shops were burnt.

The deafening blast, heard almost all over Peshawar, occurred in a market that is hugely popular with women. Most of the dead were said to be women.

Once the dust raised by the explosion settled down, stunned shopkeepers rushed to the rescue of the injured, including children. They also joined security personnel in digging through the debris in a desperate hunt for survivors.

Many people broke down on seeing the ghastly sight -- of mutilated bodies and raging fires -- and on hearing the screams of the wounded. The injured were shifted to the Lady Reading Hospital and other hospitals.

The bomb disposal squad blamed a car bomb for the disaster. Xinhua news agency quoted an eyewitness as saying that a parked car exploded, raining death and destruction.

28/10/2009

2 Indians evacuated from UN guest house in Kabul

New Delhi: Two Indians who were at the UN guest house, which was targeted by the Taliban in Kabul today, have been safely evacuated. The two Indians were working as consultants in Afghanistan, official sources said citing information received from the Indian embassy in Kabul.

2 Indians evacuated from UN guest house in Kabul

Armed Afghan police guard a UN ambulance carrying bodies of victims recovered from the Bekhtar guesthouse in Kabul on Wednesday, where UN staff were killed during an attack by gunmen. AFP

More details about them were not immediately available. The Indian embassy has conveyed that all Indians are safe in Kabul, they said.

Taliban militants armed with automatic weapons and suicide vests stormed the guest house used by UN staff in Kabul early today, killing 10 people, including six UN staff, officials said.


  28/10/2009

Core industries log growth of 4% in Sept

New Delhi: India's six core industries logged a growth of 4 percent in September and 5 percent in the first six months this fiscal, official data released Wednesday showed.

September's growth in the core sector -- comprising crude oil, refined petroleum fuel, coal, electricity, cement and finished steel sectors -- was the same as that logged in the like month last year.

However, the April-September growth this financial year was more than the 3.4 percent logged during the corresponding period last year, data released by the commerce and industry ministry showed.

Of the sectors under review, crude oil production declined 0.5 percent in September as against 0.4 percent fall in the corresponding month last year. In the first six months since April, production registered a decline of 1.2 percent, compared to a decline of 0.8 percent during the same period last fiscal.

The petroleum refinery sector grew 3.4 percent this September, up from the 2.8 percent growth registered in the corresponding month last year. However, in the first two quarters, production in the sector declined 3.6 percent, less than the 4.5 percent decline in the like period last year.

Coal production increased to 6.5 percent in September and 11.6 percent during April-September, compared to 11.2 percent and 8 percent, respectively, in the comparative periods last year.

Electricity generation was similarly up at 7.5 percent in September compared to 4.4 percent the same month last year, while it grew 6.8 percent in the first fiscal six months compared to 2.6 percent in the year-ago period.

The ailing cement sector too registered growth, expanding production by 6.5 percent in September and 12.3 percent during April-September. Last year, the growth was 8.1 percent and 12.3 percent respectively in the corresponding periods.

Production of finished carbon steel, however, declined 0.4 percent in September as against a growth of 2.1 percent in the like month last year. April-September growth too fell to 3 percent as against 3.3 percent a year ago.

Source: IANS

28/10/2009

China signifies opportunities for India: NASSCOM Chief

Bangalore: China presents four major opportunities to the IT industry in India, including servicing the north Asian market, Som Mittal, Chairperson of NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies), said here today.

"China holds four major opportunities for us, including servicing the north Asian market" he told a press conference during the two-day NASSCOM Product Conclave and Expo 2009 which was unveiled here today.

Other avenues for Indian software firms are to cater to the rapidly growing chinese market, addressing customers in the West, who are starting companies in China and servicing new customers out of China, Mittal said.

To a query on increasing protectionism from the West, especially USA, Mittal said he would be surprised if any direct protectionism comes into play. "In this condition of economic downturn, protectionism is natural. But now they (firms) have realised it is a knee-jerk reaction. What we need to guide ourselves against is indirect protectionism".

"Though we are not seeing high levels of growth, there is reasonable stability now. The four to seven per cent growth forecast by NASSCOM for the IT industry this year would be achieved. We have already started seeing a paradigm change in hiring", he said.

Sharad Sharma, Chairperson, product forum of NASSCOM said the focus of the Indian IT industry was "now shifting to both government and SMBs (small and medium businesses)".

With the impetus given to e-governance projects, "a lot of partnerships will start emerging", he said.

Source: PTI

More on news

28/10/2009

India's superb batting: Three Cheers and Four Jeers!

By Skandan Sampath

India's batting performance was full of exciting moments. MSN India's collection of cheers and jeers puts them all together for you. Enjoy the highlights that contributed to a superb 354-7.

India's superb batting

The Nagpur crowd swallows oranges!

79 more runs would have taken Sachin Tendulkar to 17,000 runs i.e if Sachin hadn't edged Peter Siddle to Cameron White at first slip. The Nagpur crowd looked like they had swallowed oranges. So the Sachin/ Sehwag opening combo has now failed two times in a row. But as Gambhir looks nice and settled at No.3 so India will have to stick to the Mumbai-Delhi duo.

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  • 12 dead as gunmen target U.N. staff in Kabul

    American is killed as militants wearing police uniforms storm guest house

    Image: An injured man is carried by police
    Romeo Gacad / AFP - Getty Images
    An injured man is carried by police following attack at Bekhtar guesthouse in Kabul, where six U.N. staff were killed.
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      Taliban attack on Kabul U.N. post kills 12
    Oct. 28: Gunmen with automatic weapons and suicide bombs storm a guest house being used by U.N. staff in Kabul.

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    updated 7:50 a.m. ET Oct. 28, 2009

    KABUL - Taliban militants wearing suicide vests stormed a guest house used by U.N. staff in the heart of the Afghan capital early Wednesday, killing 12 people — including six U.N. staff — in the biggest in a series of attacks intended to undermine next month's presidential runoff election.

    One of the six U.N. dead was an American, the U.S. Embassy said. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the early morning assaults, which also included rocket attacks at the presidential palace and the city's main luxury hotel.

    One rocket struck the "outer limit" of the presidential palace but caused no casualties, presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada said. Another slammed into the grounds of the Serena Hotel, which is favored by many foreigners.

    The device failed to explode but filled the lobby with smoke, forcing guests and employees to flee to the basement, according to an Afghan witness who asked that his name not be used for security reasons.

    'Inhuman act'
    President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack as "an inhuman act" and called on the army and police to strengthen security around all international institutions.

    The chief of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, said the attack "will not deter the U.N. from continuing all its work" in Afghanistan.

    Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attacks in a telephone call to The Associated Press, saying three militants with suicide vests, grenades and machine guns carried out the guest house assault.

    He said three days ago that the Taliban issued a statement threatening anyone working on the Nov. 7 runoff election between Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah.

    "This is our first attack," he said.

    A security guard working nearby said the attackers at the guest house were wearing police uniforms. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't supposed to talk to media.

    U.N. spokesman Adrian Edwards said six U.N. staff were killed and nine other U.N. employees were wounded in the assault, which began about dawn in the Shar-e-Naw area of the city. Terrified guests fled the building during the assault — some screaming for help and others jumping from upper floors as flames engulfed part of the three-story building.

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    Afghan police and U.N. officials said 12 people in all were killed, including the U.N. staff, three attackers, two security guards and an Afghan civilian. The bodies of the attackers were taken out of the house and sent for autopsies, said Gul Mohammad, an officer at the scene.

    It was not immediately known how the victims were killed or how the fire started, but witnesses said they heard prolonged gunfire ringing from the house before police arrived at the scene. It also was not immediately clear whether there were any other attackers besides the three killed.

    Police were seen pulling the charred body of what appeared to be a woman from a second-floor bedroom. One officer carried an injured German man by piggyback away from the scene.

    Edwards said officials were trying to account for several other U.N. workers who were staying at the guest house. He did not know their nationalities but said they were non-Afghans.

    "This has clearly been a very serious incident for us," Edwards said. "We've not had an incident like this in the past."

    Edwards said the U.N. would have to evaluate "what this means for our work in Afghanistan." The Aug. 19, 2003, truck bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, which killed 22 people, prompted the U.N. to pull out of Iraq for several years.

    A security guard, Noor Allah, said he saw a woman screaming for help in English from a second-story window and watched as terrified guests leapt from windows. Afghan police using ladders rescued at least one wounded foreigner.

    Afghans vote Nov. 7 in a second round election after U.N.-backed auditors threw out nearly a third of Karzai's votes from the Aug. 20 ballot, determining widespread fraud. That pushed Karzai's totals below the 50 percent threshold needed for a first round victory in the 36-candidate field.

    The Taliban warned Afghans to stay away from the polls or risk attacks. Dozens of people were killed in Taliban attacks during the August balloting, helping drive down turnout.

    'I was so scared'
    Mir Ahmed Formoly, 64, who lives near the guest house, said he heard the commotion and went outside where he saw muzzle flashes in the early morning light.

    "I was so scared," he said. "I went back inside the house."

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    He said gunfire and explosions lasted about two hours, punctuated by shouts and screams.

    Mohammad Ayub, a shopkeeper who lives a few doors down from the attacked house, said he heard gunfire shortly before dawn. He assumed at first that it was an attack on a house belonging to relatives of President Karzai nearby, then saw that it was a different building.

    "It was early morning, but I didn't have a watch on to know when. It was dark. Shooting started around this private guest house. I heard some shouts coming from inside the house," Ayub said.

    "I heard 'Boom! Boom!' several times. The fighting went on inside for about 10 or 15 minutes before the police came," he said.

    The guest house attack was the third major assault in the capital in recent weeks.

    On Oct. 8, a suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle outside the Indian Embassy, killing 17 people — mostly civilians — and wounding at least 76 more. The Afghan Foreign Ministry hinted at Pakistani involvement — a charge Pakistan denied.

    On Sept. 17, a suicide car bomber killed six Italian soldiers and 10 Afghan civilians on one of Kabul's main roadways.

    More on: Afghanistan

  • 9 signs that America is in decline © Getty Images // 9 signs that America is in decline © Getty Images

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Hardback

 (ISBN-13: 9780521827379 | ISBN-10: 052182737X)

This book examines the relationship between free markets and democracy. It demonstrates how the implementation of even very painful free-market economic reforms in Chile and Mexico have helped to consolidate democratic politics without engendering a backlash against either reform or democratization. This national-level compatibility between free markets and democracy, however, is founded on their rural incompatibility. In the countryside, free-market reforms socially isolate peasants to such a degree that they become unable to organize independently, and are vulnerable to the pressures of local economic elites. This helps to create an electoral coalition behind free-market reforms that is critically based in some of the market's biggest victims: the peasantry. The book concludes that the comparatively stable free-market democracy in Latin America hinges critically on its defects in the countryside; conservative, free-market elites may consent to open politics only if they have a rural electoral redoubt.

• The book combines carefully designed case-based analysis with advanced statistical techniques • The book is useful for area-based, thematic and methodological teaching. The last is true particularly because of its use of an uncommon multi-method, multi-level research design • This is a rare effort to seriously consider the effect of free markets on democracy

Contents

Acknowledgements; Part I. The Framework and Theoretical Argument: 1. Posing the right questions; 2. The sectoral foundations of free market democracy; Part II. The Cases: 3. Neoliberalism and the transformation of rural society in Chile; 4. Social capital, organization, political participation and democratic competition in Chile; 5. The consolidation of free market democracy and Chilean electoral competition, 1988–2000; 6. Markets and democratization in Mexico: rural politics between Corporatism and Neoliberalism; Part III. Conclusions and Implications: 7. Political competitiveness, organized interests, and the democratic market; References; Index.

http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=052182737X&utm_source=DOI&utm_medium=MultiLink&utm_content=052182737X&utm_campaign=CDI

Does Democracy Threaten the Free Market?

Mises Daily: Thursday, April 10, 2003 by

Although Ludwig von Mises wrote approvingly of the just qualities of democracy, the incompatibility of democratic forms of government with wealth creation has been noted even within the institute bearing his name (e.g., Democracy—The God That Failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe). World on Fire by Amy Chua (Doubleday 2003) is perhaps the most sweeping account of the visceral tension between democracy and free markets published to date. Subtitled "How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability," this methodical review of history and the present state of affairs seems at first to be merely another antiglobalist screed, complete with praise from the doyenne of the Liberal Left, Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America) on its dust jacket.

But it is nothing of the sort, bearing praise also from that nemesis of the liberals, Thomas Sowell (Ethnic America, The Economics and Politics of Race, and many others). Chua herself, a professor of law at Yale, denies being antiglobalist, and the text of this, her first book, bears out the conclusion that she is no more antimarket than antidemocratic. But she has an appreciation of the limits of both that is both strong and highly nuanced.

 

Her highly original proposition (with credit duly given to Robert Kaplan) is that the simultaneous encouragement of laissez-faire free markets and democratic government based on universal suffrage in third-world countries is almost bound to lead to the destruction of either or both in short order. While she mentions that doing exactly this is the policy both of the United States government and of various multinational entities such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, she delves not at all into the question of why this is, by far the most serious omission from her analysis.

But Chua's marshalling of facts and historical perspectives from dozens of places and times around the globe more than offset any diagnostic omissions. And this lawyer writes with clarity and focus that would credit any historian, or even novelist. Thoroughly accessible to any thinking layperson, her text studies the presence and growth of what she calls "market-dominant minorities" in developing countries, and contrasts them with their comparative absence from societies that have attained and held a high level of development, both economic and social (that is, of their markets and their democratic forms of government).

 

She holds—and forcefully demonstrates in case after case—that when impoverished ethnic majorities are empowered by the sudden introduction of full-blown democracy, they fall prey with discouraging regularity to demagogues who incite them against the often-conspicuous disparity of welfare and privilege between them and the small, exclusive ethnic minorities that just as regularly seize power over huge proportions of the wealth generated by free markets.

One's first reaction to this thesis is naturally, "but what about the trickle-down effect?" Chua devotes considerable attention to this effect, beginning with an acknowledgement that it exists, and in some cases is strong enough to ameliorate the dynamic she describes. But in far more cases, as she details in terms of actual times and places, either the effect is negligible, as in the majority of cases in Africa, or its rather subtle realities are not recognized by still impoverished masses consumed by envy and agitated in this state by ambitious powermongers. Her examples of such opportunists range all the way from the present day back to Hitler and the Nazis.

Various schemes for hijacking both markets and democracies are described, with real examples given from recent history. One form is labelled "antimarket backlash," and was exemplified in the past with such acts as expropriation and nationalization of industries and productive resources. Some of these instances (e.g., "Chile for the Chileans") seem almost irresistible to officeholders who wish to continue to hold office. Nowadays, more subtle forms of resistance such as regulatory interference and subsidization of competitors have gained favor. Another unlovely mutation is "cronyism," or even "crony capitalism," in which figurehead regimes of indigenous individuals are put up for office and supported there by behind-the-scenes cabals of the market-dominant minority. None other than Boris Yeltsin of Russia is shown to be a case of this fraud.

The author does not seem to be motivated by any ideological or moral agenda, and scrupulously confines the prescriptions one so eagerly awaits from a study of such manifest insight and balance to the concluding section of her book. The prescriptions, unfortunately, seem to be more palliative than curative, but in fairness it should be noted (and it is abundantly noted in the book) that both free markets and democracy embody great values, and together with their mutual antagonism, their pursuit unavoidably poses intractable challenges.

The prescription receiving the most examination is, appropriately, the most controversial and problematic one: affirmative action, to slap a label on it that does not do justice to the caveats that accompany the prescription. Chua identifies "affirmative-action" programs and their effects going back well into the Nineteenth Century, both those that failed grotesquely, and those that may be said to have succeeded in one measure or another. She conducts the necessary evaluations of effects with due consideration to the historical, economic, and cultural backdrops in which they were implemented, therein supporting her contention that the inappropriateness or ineffectuality of such programs in many times and places may still not require ruling any and all such programs out for all times and places. Monarchists may find it interesting that the program receiving the most favorable report card in historical perspective is the only program among those reviewed that was designed and implemented by a king in his kingdom (King Vajiravudh of Siam).

Other prescriptions are considered in the context of still another striking observation: Western regimes and institutions, while fomenting the injection of full blown free markets and democracy into cultures having little to no experience with either, themselves grew up and still exist in circumstances that substantially lack both.

 

While universal adult suffrage seems to be pretty much the rule among western democracies today, these democracies came into existence through a process often encompassing centuries during which the franchise was gradually expanded from an initially very narrow base. And while free markets dominate the economies of these same societies, still major ameliorative institutions thrive and grow, from Medicaid and Social Security in the United States to the cradle-to-grave social programs of the Scandinavian countries.

While Chua's orientation does not seem explicitly statist at any point, still she fails to note the culpable role that states and state supported multinational institutions play in the creation of the very problem that her entire book is devoted to. Much less, then, does she examine the processes through which so much power came to be directed toward the advancement of such a malign combination of two such seemingly benign goals. Therein, it may be realistically suspected, lies the root not only of this problem, but also of myriad others about which whole shelves of books such as World on Fire have been written, and must continue to be written.

Ultimately, those books must go even further than this one does. But this one represents a hopeful, even inspiring step on the steep, uphill path leading to the knowledge that will make us free.

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N. Joseph Potts studies economics from his home in South Florida. pottsf@msn.com