Customer Reviews

Compelling and insightful - By: Armstrong Helen, 13 Apr 2005
This is probably the most insightful & intelligent book I have ever read - I was looking for easy answers as to why,in this world of increased information & knowledge about other's suffering, we continue to accept it or deny it or ignore it. Professor Cohen does not give easy answers: he challenges you to both accept some bottom-line truths, but also not to be passive & separate from those who are suffering.

He is incredibly knowledgeable, but writesin an accessible style that draws youin - as if he is asking the same questions & providing an array of answers for you to consider. He talks to the reader as an equal, although he took me to places I had never thought through before.

He wrote the bookin 2001, presumably before 9/11, the ensuing Afghan & Iraq Wars, & the culture of denial embodied by Bush & the NeoCons. No matter: Guantanomo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Ariel Sharon, Mordecai Vanunu, the rape of Falluja, et al are all here.

He does not turn his laser-vision on the governments' denial of our failing guardianship of the planet. No matter: drillingin Alaska, the oil wars, American & other developed countries' over-consumption of resources is all there. And our lack of acknowledgement.

He does not look at our denial of not only the inequalities of womenin our societies, but of the repression, murder & rape of women. No matter : it is all there - denial at personal & individual level, at the social & political level, & at the universal level.

The book neither excuses us nor releases us from our responsibilities. In the end we all have to not only acknowledge the truth, not only see it, recognise it, acknowledge it - but also to act. Sometimes the only act open to us is to stand up & say that we know.

I write this just after the death of Andrea Dworkin. One who just stood up & stated the truth & was vilified & hated for it. Amnesty's prisoners of consciousness are often there because they refused to participatein denial. In even our "free" countries, death threats can easily ensue from pointing out truths from Ayaan Hirsi Aliin Holland to corporate whistle-blowersin the States, to CIA operatives exposing flawsin Pentagon double-think.

Professor Cohen has written a book that should be read by every activist, every politician, every intellectual, every thinker, every feminist, every environmentalist - he leaves us with no answers (or all answers) - only the responsibility to recognise, acknowledge & voice the truth.