Browsing by Subject "comparative civilizations"

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    Book Review of "Glimpses of Igbo Culture and Civilization"
    (International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations, 2005-06) Andregg, Michael M.
    Book Review of: “Glimpses of Igbo Culture and Civilization,” 293 pgs. Edited by Okolie Animba, Computer Edge Publishers, Lagos Nigeria, 2000. This book is the proceedings from a Pan-Igbo National Seminar and workshop organized by a Cultural Heritage Center in Uwani, Enugu, Nigeria. So its overall academic quality, coherence and so forth are less than one might expect from pure research institutions. Many of the 14 authors are professors from 7 named universities, but some are headmen, chiefs, or other governmental officials. In a similar vein, the printing quality is not the best. However, those reservations noted, this book was a wealth of information on its intended subject, and while the authors were not all 100% pedigreed scholars, they were all very sincerely and earnestly trying to share the essences of Igbo life with a larger world. In that task they succeeded. The chapters proceed from history, through language and literature, social organization to ‘fine and applied arts.’ The most interesting chapters to me, and the ones I will use in class, looked at how the Igbo people try to transmit wisdom across the generations. Along the way one encounters some very interesting asides, as when Chibiko Okebalama of Nigeria University in Nsukka observes that “education in Igboland is gradually becoming a woman affair.” Some things may be universal across our world of transition. But first some background. The “Igbo people” are fundamentally a language group with one large division and many smaller ones. They live mainly in southeastern Nigeria and are known to the outside world more for losing the war for an independent “Biafra” against more dominant Hausa and Yoruba language groups, within a Nigerian context that has over 400 dialects and over 30 distinct languages. The weakness of this text is reflected by the fact that there were zero maps in the entire work, and most discussion of the range the Igbo occupy was in terms of this valley or that river watershed rather than things a western eye could easily place on maps without further research. Another problem it struggles with and notes in the very beginning is that before the British colonialists arrived, the Igbo people were non-literate. So much of the commentary on Igbo culture is necessarily drawn from oral tradition, put into a relatively recent Igbo written language and then translated into English. They did the best they could but this is obviously a difficult problem, and sometimes the real meaning of phrases remains obscure. That said, the book goes through the limited archaeology of the region, noting dates on pottery and human tools around 3,000 B.C.E. which documents “human activity of considerable antiquity.” This section defends the concept of Igbo civilization in an attempt “to contradict here the imperialist view that Ibgoland had no history or culture worth the name until the establishment of British rule.” This defensiveness was not necessary to my eye, but recurs from time to time. Now, to the chapters on proverbs that interested me most.
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    Book Reviews of Thucydides' Trap and 2 other books for China, ISCSC, 2018
    (2018-06-16) Andregg, Michael M.
    NB: Unlike many reviews, this will combine three books to compare their different perspectives on US – China relations. We will begin with the mechanics and topline of all three. Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s’ Trap? 2017, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston and New York. 288 pages of text with 20 pages of front matter and 76 pages of endnotes. This is an academic, theoretical text with a dark tone of impending doom. It was also very well publicized and reviewed, resulting in much buzz among policy professionals. John Pomfret, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present. 2016, Henry Holt & Co., New York. This is the most detailed history of US-China relations among these three, written by a long-time correspondent for the Washington Post who married a Chinese woman and clearly loves the country. 637 pages of text with 54 pages of endnotes and index. Howard W. French, Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power, 2017, Alfred A. Knopf, New York. 288 pages of text with 42 pages of endnotes and index. This was the most useful for me to help understand historical roots of Chinese thought. It is less detailed than Pomfret, and less theoretical than Allison. French was also a correspondent for the Washington Post, and later a bureau chief for the New York Times in many countries including China.
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    Intelligence and Migration: Cases from North America, for Need to Know 6 in Sweden
    (Polish Institute for National Remembrance, sponsor of the annual "Need to Know" conferences on intelligence history, 2016-11-17) Andregg, Michael M.
    The USA and Canada receive migrants from every part of the world. Many are legal immigrants and some are illegal or undocumented immigrants (about 11 million in the USA of a population of about 324 million, or ~ 3.4% of the total US population in 2016). Syrians, North Africans, Afghans and Iraqi refugees are the biggest immigration demographics in Europe and each occur here but in North America other ethnicities predominate, especially Latin Americans and Asians. 21st century terrorism has increased concerns about immigrants, especially undocumented or illegal immigrants. There is a long history of such concerns in North America beginning with Native American fears of the tidal wave of Europeans entering after 1492. What happened to them is one lesson security professionals must consider. The natives were nearly wiped out over a period of centuries, often by direct aggression, but more by disease and exile to harsh and barren lands. That lesson is that if large numbers of immigrants with aggressive birth rates come, they can take over entire continents in just a few centuries. But our vigorous and interesting continent has also been “built by immigrants” who remain very important to national economies today. Immigrant populations of special interest to modern US intelligence services include: Cubans (who enjoy a special immigration status and intelligence significance). Somalians (targeted for recruitment for foreign wars by Al Shabaab and ISIS). Colombians (and other South and Central Americans, of special interest in drug wars). Mexicans (the same except that Mexicans and their descendants are also very involved in domestic US agriculture, construction, health care, and every job description). Chinese (of special national security concern for economic and technical espionage). Poles, Romanians, Ukrainians, Russians, Slovenes, Czech’s, and all Eastern European ethnicities (of special relevance during the ‘Cold War,’ now warming up again). We will survey these ethnic groups with respect to three broader themes: A. National security concerns like counterterrorism and counter proliferation (of WMD). B. The drug wars. C. Economic espionage and cybersecurity concerns (related, but also quite different).