Reviews for Association of Caribbean States Acs Investment and Business Guide

The average rating for Association of Caribbean States Acs Investment and Business Guide based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-11-02 00:00:00 Martin Moser An agnostic wag once said, "Any fool can make fun of evangelicals, but if you really want to see a crazed doctrine, look for a conservative Catholic, preferably a conservative Jesuit." This certainly holds true for Paul Johnson, who mars what could have been a superbly written book of breathtaking scope, with points of view that aren't merely limited or blinkered, but downright crazed at times. In the first couple chapters, I was ready to give this book an instant 5 stars, due to the author's ability to integrate economic, cultural, and political trends in a coherent whole. I did not begrudge him his tendency to paint all collectivist thought with a broad brush, if only because the world needed an appropriately sober look at the crimes of Lenin as well as Stalin. But by the time we get to the 1930s, Johnson's oddball rejection of all modernist trends became a bit much to take. If he had been a traditional social conservative, or an economic conservative of the Stockman-Laffer school, one could accept his biases and move on. But Johnson is just plain weird, combining a Libertarian-like view of the power of the individual and a rejection of economic collectivism, with a near-devout belief in the power of empire. He rightly chides particular failures of the British empire in decline, like Anthony Eden's 1956 failure at Suez, but at the same time longs for a British and an American empire that would assert itself without regard to the consequences. In his review of the 1930s, it's no surprise that he'd call FDR an aristocratic publicity-seeker and populist quack, and he'd be right in part. It's also predictable that he'd link the elder Philby's adventures in the Middle East to young Kim Philby's dalliances with the KGB. But to link all strands of 1930s liberal thought to the gay dilettantes of the Bloomsbury group in the UK? Not only does this hold a latent homophobia which Johnson displays throughout the book, but it attributes too much power to this group, in the same way modern conservatives are sure all 21st-century left-wingers have read Saul Alinsky. It just ain't so, folks. Johnson's fractured-funhouse view of current events veers out of control as we hit the 1950s and 1960s. His analyses of Castro and other socialist "heroes" are traditional conservative views, not that far off base but not particularly interesting. But his demonization of former UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold as the man who allowed Third World risings and non-alignment to get out of hand is downright laughable. Memo to Johnson: whether the Soviets manipulated Third World struggle or not, the traditional empires were bound to fall - there wasn't a thing the US or UK could have done to retain their protected domains. At least Piers Brendon, the author of 'Decline and Fall of the British Empire', understood this far better than Johnson did, and provided a far more accurate narrative of the British geographical decline in the 20th century as a result. The last 100 pages of Johnson's book are comical enough to skip entirely. Of course the strikes at the end of the 1970s doomed Britain, but only a fool still sees Maggie Thatcher as a savior. Of course the liberal media manipulated Watergate, but to try and call John Sirica a "judicial terrorist" is beyond the pale. Face it, seeing Nixon and Reagan as unvarnished heroes of the century, while seeing Jimmy Carter as an unvarnished villain, is a nonsensical two-dimensional view of the world. Even in the latter chapters of the book, I enjoyed seeing Keynesianism get a tweaking, I loved the way Johnson linked Jean-Paul Sartre with Nazism and commented that all romanticism is close to fascism (which I certainly believe to be the case with Rousseau, Goethe, Schiller, Byron, Shelley, etc.). And I loved his quote about Utopianism being not that far from gangsterism. But Johnson ruins what would have been a provocative book in the Christoper Hitchens tradition with a series of loony conclusions about human behavior that are downright unsustainable, no matter what your political or economic beliefs may be.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-09-30 00:00:00 Lawrence Clark A momentous project-painstakingly researched and vast in scope with attention to detail this is one of the best one volume books covering the world history of the 20th century. A conservative perspective and therefore unlikely to be recommended reading in most university courses, which is all the more reason to read it, because it covers facts and truths that your professors in university never taught you. Dissects the monsters of the twentieth century, such as Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot and Idi Amin and their hellish tyrannies. And the author illustrates how these blood soaked despots operated. Lenin showed his psychopathic nature before he seized power. At 22 he dissuaded friends from collecting money for the victims of famine on the theory that hunger performs a 'progressive function' and would drive the peasants to 'reflect on the fundamental facts of capitalist society'. It takes an evil mind to think like this. The Bolsheviks exploited the tensions between urban and rural populations, as a prelude to the mass killing of peasants in their hideously named 'Dekulakization drive' Johnson reflects how 'No man personifies better the replacement of the religious impulse by the will to power" than Lenin. Effectively Stalin was carrying on the work created by Lenin, As regards Hitler, his philosophy was in fact in some degree also influenced by Lenin "There is no essential difference between class warfare and race warfare. between destroying a class. Between destroying a class and destroying a race. Thus the modern practise of genocide was born'. Churchill pointed out in 1919 how of all the tyrannies in history the Bolshevik tyranny is the worst, the most destructive and most degrading." Of course this was before the genocide carried out by Hitler and Stalin. There is no question that the regime of Mussolini could not be compared to the bloodthirsty horrors of Lenin, Stalin and Hitler. This digest points out many facts that are overlooked. While Hitler thundered that the Bolshevik regime was 'Jewish'. and while it is true that many Jews had been prominent in the Bolshevik movements before the Russian Revolution, they steadily lost ground after the Bolsheviks came to power and after 1925 the regime was already anti-Semitic. Although there were always Jewish Marxists active in the Soviet regime who helped to persecute their own people. The Jewish Marxist have always rejected self-determination for Jews while advocating it for others. During the 1939 Molotv-Ribbentrop pact, Hitler praised Stalin's cleansing of the communist project of Jewish influence. Johnson examines the war of the Soviet regime begun by Lenin and completed by Stalin, taking over 20 million lives, known as the 'dekulakization drive'. "It was typical of the way in which the pursuit of utopia leads a tiny handful of men in power abrubtly to assault a society many centuries in the making, to treat men like ants, and stamp on their nest.Without warning, Stalin called for an all out offensive against the kulaks. We must smash the kulaks, eliminate them as a class." A kulak effectively meant any peasant who resisted forced collectivization. This was one of the most horrific wars of a state against it's own people. Going on to the rise of Hitler Johnson points out how the communist and radical left saw the Social Democrats as greater enemies than the Nazis and referred to the Social Democrats as 'social fascists' thus beginning the disease in which leftists up to and especially today refer anyone with whom they disagree (such as today anyone who is anti-Islamist terror) as 'Fascists'. 'Blinded by their own absurd political analysis the Communists actually wanted a Hitler government, believing it would be farcical affair, the prelude to their own seizure of power". The author covers the trials and tribulations of the West, including Britain, America and Europe during this century, though I would perhaps not be as dismissive of Keynesianism and the welfare state in all cases, as Johnson seems to be. Johnson illustrates how prior to the Spanish civil war, it was the Left who first abandoned democracy for violence and massacred thousands of peasants and clergy prior to the reaction of Franco and the Nationalists. The Republic was being steadily infiltrated and overtaken by Stalinists and it is almost certain that if it not been for the Nationalist victory, Spain would have become a Stalinist dictatorship rather than a National Conservative one. Franco wisely kept Spain out of the war and his dictatorship after the Spanish Civil War was a fairly benevolent one. Johnson completely takes apart the absurdity of anti-colonial conspiracy theories which are force fed to students at universities. He examines the Watergate affair and relates how previous Presidents, including Kennedy and Johnson, had indulged in similar espionage. But Nixon's 'imperial presidency' essentially destroyed by an imperial media which reversed the will of America's voters The author includes a chapter on Third world regimes after independence, the horrors perpetrated by the FLN in algeria, and Idi amin's mass murder. Idi Amin's regime was a client of Gadaffi's. It was a racist regime and massacred the Langi and Acholi tribes within weeks of taking power. His personal bodyguard of Palestinian terrorists were the most ruthless and adept of his torturers and murderers Johnson debunks the lie that the State of Israel was created by imperialism illustrating how the United Kingdom imperial government Roosevelt sided with the Arabs prior to Israel's birth and how every Arab-Israeli war after 1948 war was begun by Arab aggression. A comprehensive history, a nuanced but never morally relative read from a perspective that needs more coverage. highly recommended.