Page 2 of
2 BOOK
REVIEW The Roving
Eye's grim world
view Globalistan by
Pepe Escobar
Reviewed by
David Simmons
his points
with no fewer than 33 graphics, including several
maps. But nearly all of these are taken directly
off the Internet without modification, so they
lack the higher definition needed for legibility
in a printed publication. A few are readable
enough to be of interest, but most are a waste of
paper.
Far more forgivable is the fact
that although this book went to
press very recently, it is
already out of date in places. For example there
is quite a long section on Saparmurat Niyazov, the
Turkmen dictator who died in December, probably
just hours after the book went to print. Escobar
foresaw that something like this was likely to
happen, writing, "Globalistan, the book, is
a work in progress. Ideally it should be a Joycean
'riverrun', the world non-stop writing itself" (p
337).
Another oddity in the book is that
while the publisher feels the urge to print a
"colophon" on the last page, and use half that
page to explain what a colophon is, he feels no
such compulsion to enlighten the reader as to who
Pepe Escobar is. Were Escobar merely another
armchair pundit or ivory-tower chin-stroker, that
might be fine, but in fact he is, in the words of
the mini-biography on his page at Asia Times
Online, an "extreme traveler" who has actually
been to most of the places he writes about. This
becomes somewhat clear from the first-person
accounts in the book, but Escobar wisely chooses
not to clutter the text up with too many of these.
One that he does include (p 155f) is his
remarkable encounter with Ahmad Shah Masoud two
weeks before the anti-Taliban resistance leader
was blown to bits by al-Qaeda - that assassination
took place two days before September 11, 2001.
(The full story is on ATol: Masoud: From warrior to
statesman, September 12, 2001.)
As with any encyclopedia or "warped travel
book", different readers will find different parts
of this work of more interest than others, but few
- except probably the Bush cabinet or the great
villains of Globalistan, the principals of the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund,
who come in for especially sharp barbs as the
architects and enforcers of a neo-liberal system
that keeps at least 2 billion people (and rising)
in abject, hopeless poverty - will find nothing
helpful, or frightening, herein.
For this
reviewer, safely ensconced in his comfortable
townhouse in central Thailand with his wife, kid
and cat, with his "crossover" mini-sport-utility
vehicle safely gassed up and parked in the
carport, it is possible to keep at arm's length
from most of the horrific scenarios presented in
Globalistan; Iraq is far away, gasoline is still
affordable, and for now Thailand's Jihadistan is
hundreds of kilometers to the south.
Still, it was difficult to suppress a
shudder when reading the chapter "Slumistan", on
the coming war between the privileged,
safe-for-now gated communities of "Condofornia"
and the seething masses of angry urban poor, who
have already begun to lash out against the
brutality of Corporatistan-imposed misery, as seen
once again this week in Sao Paulo (an urban
battlefield analyzed at length in the "Slumistan"
chapter). Will this be the bomb that explodes
first and destroys everything? Or will we be able
to wait a little longer, until the inevitable oil
wars start in earnest, or until someone actually
starts that nuclear war we've all been dreading
since 1945? More important, can all of this - or
any of it - be prevented?
On that last
point - what can be done? - this otherwise heavy
tome becomes light indeed. One is left with the
impression that preventing or even significantly
postponing the ultimate destruction wrought by
Liquid War is akin to holding back the tide.
Democracy? Little is said about it - again, not
surprising given the body blows democracy as a
panacea for the world's ills has taken in recent
years, with the world's self-proclaimed evangelist
of the democracy god expanding its empire and the
world's largest democracy - India - still finding
negligible relief for its teeming masses living in
squalor, while its ruling elites crow about
meaningless GDP figures.
Commenting on
what yet another friend of Asia Times Online, Tom
Engelhardt of Tomdispatch, called the Blue Wave
"crashing on our shores, soaking our imperial
masters" (p 337), the Democratic victory in the US
congressional elections of last November 7,
Escobar notes, "But even after Guantanamo, Shock
and Awe, Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, Katrina, the
smashing of civil liberties, the abolition of
habeas corpus, the overlapping corruption
scandals, still some American states voted by 60%
for the Republican Party." Even on those rare
occasions when we the people get a chance to make
a difference, a lot of us don't bother.
And thus - to take another Escobar quote a
little out of context - it's likely all to end
"not with a whimper, but with replayed bang after
bang".
Globalistan: How the Globalized
World Is Dissolving into Liquid War by Pepe
Escobar. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Nimble Books, 2006.
ISBN 0-9788138-2-0. Price US$33.94, 354 pages.
David Simmons is an Asia Times
Online correspondent based in Thailand.
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
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Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
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