You could also send them to Bin Laden.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/20/AR2006012001971_pf.html
but his communication with the global literati is so infrequent I think chavez is a much better bet--though don't rule out Ahmadinejad.
This raises two questions for me, why pick this book (or bin Laden Blum's)? And who is buying books based on these recommendations that hasn't already heard about them?
to the first I mean this rather literally: How does bin Laden or Chavez come across the book and why do they think it will add legitimacy to their argument? For which audience? The Chavez/Chomsky connection is more understandable but I still wonder if these guys have a whole lot of time to sit around reading books by US authors, possibly in translation, until they happen upon the one that really clinches it. Was bin Laden just puttering around the house picking up books off the stacks of books critical of the US by American Authors--started Chomsky but he was just a little too pedantic, Chalmers Johnson a little too old fashioned, started some stuff by Ali but found him somewhat bombastic then got a recommendation from a friend over tea: "oh yeah, you really need to check out this Blum guy.
he really nails it." So bin Laden, always interested in finding books written by Western authors which help him shape his views and rhetoric, curls up with the book and finds it so compelling he mentions it by name in one of his few communiques. More cynically, maybe he just found out about a book, any book, by a western author that supported his views and thought that this would be enough, even if the author was obscure and marginal in US culture.
Then, even though the latter is true, a lot of people, shopping on the US Amazon site, upon hearing these recommendations say, "huh...I've been wondering what all this hubub is with America being bad. Seems unlikely, but maybe I'll check out this Chomsky guy, whoever he is, to see what it's all about." How many people does it take to change a ranking like this on Amazon? I'm sure it's fewer than I think and I don't think it's that many. Still I assume it is in the thousands and I have a hard time picturing thousands of people already convinced of most of what Chomsky says, possibly already owning some of his other books being the only ones who say, "I've been meaning to buy that one: if our comrade in Venezuela liked it, I guess I'll check it out."
I am sure none of this is as accidental as I make it out to be, but I am intrigued by how it does happen. If for no other reason that I'm sure Morales would be intrigued by certain passages in "After the New Economy." And the colors of the book cover http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/1565847709.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V1056519160_.jpg would probably match his sweater http://www.boliviamall.com/catalog/newspress26.01.06.php --always a concern.
In any case, does anyone know the last time Bush II quoted from a book? Has he ever quoted or cited a book that had an Islamic, Arabic or Middle Eastern origin in a speech directed at those populations?
-s
