A passionately committed environmental activist unearths China's criminal, ongoing policy of resource extraction.
A grim, relentless exposé of the plundering of Tibet's natural resources by China.
A Canadian journalist who has found his way into the secret workings of an oppressed country via trekking, kayaking and documenting the issues, Buckley (co-author of Lonely Planet's first guidebook to Tibet in 1986) sounds the alarm on what he calls China's eco-cide of fragile, high-altitude Tibet. He notes all of the devastation that is taking place with impunity and in secret: deforestation (to the tune of 50 percent of Tibet's forests since China moved into the country in 1950; this has represented $50 billion for construction and manufacturing); damming of important rivers whose waters have sustained populations in the deltas of India, Nepal, Pakistan and others yet are now diverted to thirsty Chinese cities; tunnel boring through sacred mountains for mineral extraction via railroads and the conveying of a huge influx of Chinese Han settlers that beleaguer the scant 6 million Tibetan Buddhist natives; and the sad, silent disappearance of wildlife such as the Tibetan gazelle and black-necked crane. The Tibetan Plateau is called the "Third Pole" due to the significance of its glaciers, which are melting at an alarming rate thanks to climate change. Since 2006, China has the dubious distinction of being the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and other gases, largely due to coal. China has also engaged in a dam-building frenzy, harnessing hydropower not for the Tibetans, who are scarcely consulted, but for the needs of the billions of Chinese. Unlike in India, public protests are circumvented by authoritarian speed and secrecy; moreover, the Tibetan nomads are removed forcibly from their ancestral grasslands and rendered ecological migrants. Buckley's concluding tribute to idyllic Bhutan is eye-opening and provides a stark contrast to the bleak picture of Tibet.
A passionately committed environmental activist unearths China's criminal, ongoing policy of resource extraction.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1137279545
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
Bernstein and Woodward, the two Washington Post journalists who broke the Big Story, tell how they did it by old fashioned seat-of-the-pants reporting — in other words, lots of intuition and a thick stack of phone numbers. They've saved a few scoops for the occasion, the biggest being the name of their early inside source, the "sacrificial lamb" H**h Sl**n. But Washingtonians who talked will be most surprised by the admission that their rumored contacts in the FBI and elsewhere never existed; many who were telephoned for "confirmation" were revealing more than they realized. The real drama, and there's plenty of it, lies in the private-eye tactics employed by Bernstein and Woodward (they refer to themselves in the third person, strictly on a last name basis). The centerpiece of their own covert operation was an unnamed high government source they call Deep Throat, with whom Woodward arranged secret meetings by positioning the potted palm on his balcony and through codes scribbled in his morning newspaper. Woodward's wee hours meetings with Deep Throat in an underground parking garage are sheer cinema: we can just see Robert Redford (it has to be Robert Redford) watching warily for muggers and stubbing out endless cigarettes while Deep Throat spills the inside dope about the plumbers. Then too, they amass enough seamy detail to fascinate even the most avid Watergate wallower — what a drunken and abusive Mitchell threatened to do to Post publisher Katherine Graham's tit, and more on the Segretti connection — including the activities of a USC campus political group known as the Ratfuckers whose former members served as a recruiting pool for the Nixon White House. As the scandal goes public and out of their hands Bernstein and Woodward seem as stunned as the rest of us at where their search for the "head ratfucker" has led. You have to agree with what their City Editor Barry Sussman realized way back in the beginning — "We've never had a story like this. Just never."
Pub Date: June 18, 1974
ISBN: 0671894412
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1974
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