Critiques en avant-premièrePepe Escobar

Pepe Escobar's stunning tour de horizon describes the mad violence that the "flattened" World directs against the Other. William Engdahl review on GlobalResearch.ca: "This marvelous book by Pepe Escobar, the well-known 'Roving Eye' of Asia Times Online, ought to be placed on the desk of every member of the US Congress, as well as British Parliament members and any others who are debating placing their troops in far-flung remote areas of the world to 'make the world safe for Globalistan.' Escobar is at his inimitable best in his personal narratives, with his keen eye for the absurdities of the globalizing world, the contrast between obscenely wealthy and dirt poor."

Just in time for General Petraeus's Sep. 15 status report on the U.S. effort in Iraq, Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar brings us RED ZONE BLUES: A SNAPSHOT OF BAGHDAD DURING THE SURGE. This outstanding work of original reporting paints a chilling eyewitness portrait of a massive, ongoing outrage. A few inimitable excerpts: "Sadr (former Saddam) City is also, along with Gaza and the West Bank, the privileged theatre of the already evolving 21st century war, pitting the high-tech Western haves against the slum-dwelling Third World have-nots. If the Bush administration had any intention of conquering any hearts and minds in Iraq, this is where it would be trying the hardest. Reality spells otherwise. ... In Sadr City once again I had come face to face with the future of the Arab world: urban, young and poor, and Muqtada was their leader." "Baghdad is now the ultimate laboratory of perverse social engineering: a brutalized, militarized, neo-Spartan future three-tier society where privileges are enjoyed by the first tier - the US Army, the handsomely paid US shadow army of contractors - and the second tier - Iraqi politicians who spend most of their time in London or Middle Eastern capitals. The overall population are just corralled, humiliated and treated as mere slaves - extras in their own land." "The soul of Saladin may be impatient for an heir. So are hundreds of millions in the ummah. What rough warrior, its hour come out at last, slouches toward Jerusalem, Damascus or Baghdad to be born?" RED ZONE BLUES includes a sample chapter of Escobar's GLOBALISTAN: HOW THE GLOBALIZED WORLD IS DISSOLVING INTO LIQUID WAR (Nimble Books, 2007).