CSU, Chico News

Edwin Black, an investigative reporter, columnist and author, with stories in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Newsday and New York Jewish Week, will visit California State University, Chico on Wednesday, Jan. 26. He will deliver a free lecture on Iraq at 7 pm in PAC 134.

Black is the author of several books, including the award-winning “IBM and the Holocaust” (Crown Publishing, 2001), “War Against the Weak” (Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003) and, most recently, “Banking on Baghdad: Inside Iraq’s 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict” (Wiley, 2004).

Recent articles include “Iraqi Elections—A Lose–Lose Proposition” and “Given Its History, Can We Succeed in Iraq?” In the latter article, adapted from “Banking on Baghdad” and published first in Newsday and then in syndicated columns, Black asserts that “America cannot succeed in Iraq until we understand the history we ignored and recently repeated.”

Although Mesopotamia is referred to as the “Cradle of Civilization,” Black said that the title is misleading, as archaeologists have documented civilized and highly organized cultures in ancient Jericho some 9,000 years ago, in southern France where mystic cave art was found dating back 15,000 to 30,000 years and among southern African cave dwellers some 70,000 years ago.

The region, writes Black, became a commanding commercial center and crossroads and was the site of centuries of invasion, conquest and subjugation of its citizens. “Indeed,” wrote Black, “for nearly 7,000 years, Iraq has been shackled to unspeakable violence, toppled pride, cruel despotic authorities, and an utter lack of self-governance.”

Black said that during a tempestuous twentieth century in Iraq, “The region has offered only one attraction to the Western powers: oil. It has been a fatal attraction, one that has lured the Europeans, and later the Americans, deep into this troubled and tortured land.”

“America will never succeed in Iraq,” said Black, “if we once again naively expect democracy to take root there and flourish. The only way to succeed in Iraq is to survive long enough to intelligently withdraw, and then rapidly—at breakneck speed—develop alternative energy resources to detach us from this far-off place where we are not wanted, where we should not be, and upon which our industrialized world is now dependent.”

In the past several years, Black has won numerous awards. In 2004, he won the Rockower Award for Investigative Journalism and First Prize from the American Jewish Press Association for his syndicated investigation of the Ford Foundation’s systematic funding of hate groups.

Black’s visit is sponsored by the Matt and Isabel Fine Lecture of the Modern Jewish Studies Program, the Koret Foundation, the Colleges of Business, Natural Sciences, and Engineering, Computer Science and Construction Management, and the offices of the President and Provost of CSU, Chico.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 20th, 2005 at 8:30 am and is filed under 2005 Spring.