Page Text: Noam Chomsky's Review on 'Oceania'
"André Vltchek has compiled a stunning record in evoking the reality of the contemporary world, not as perceived through the distorting prisms of power and privilege, but as lived by the myriad victims. He has also not failed to trace the painful - and particularly for the West, shameful - realities to their historical roots. In this work, Vltchek extends his penetrating gaze to a lovely, desecrated, almost forgotten vast area of the world, Oceania, which he shows to be "a microcosm of almost all major problems faced by our planet. He brings to light the strength and courage of the people, and their achievements, and explores the hopes for decent recovery and survival if the powerful can allow themselves to comprehend what they have done, and to accept the responsibility of actually protecting their victims instead of mouthing comforting and self-serving slogans." - Noam Chomsky
Michael Parenti's Review on 'Oceania'
Andre Vltchek brings a highly informed and incisive intelligence to the politico-economic realities of whole countries and regions. His work on Oceania alone has opened our eyes to the iniquities of the free market in that part of the world. He writes with objectivity and investigative honesty but also with a heartfelt concern for social justice. His efforts deserve our keen attention.
---Michael Parenti, author of /God and His Demons/ and /Contrary Notions
Jim Miles' Review on 'Oceania'
Having spent six years travelling and exploring the many regions of the idylicized South Pacific, Andre Vltchek reveals in his latest book, “Oceania,” that it is a region endangered by its encounters with external actions and ideas. While all is not lost yet, and some smaller areas still retain their indigenous subsistent inhabitation of the water and lands, all the islands, atolls, and reefs are highly stressed by many factors, factors that in the confined spaces of an island or atoll, suddenly seem magnified in significance as compared to a larger continental land mass.
Vltchek wanders across the entire region - slowly as it were - using the highly constrained and schedules and authoritarian rules of the few airlines that service the area. The airlines are predominantly foreign controlled, and that foreign control is what leads to the majority of the problems in the region. Most of the island groups are nominally independent countries, yet have become ‘re-colonized’ through a variety of modern connivances and rules and regulations imposed from outside, often supported by elites and their cronies within. The themes and ideas covered in the book are familiar to anyone following current world events, but in an area where so much is focussed on such a small land base, the litany of negative events and actions appear almost overwhelming.