a massively absorbing series of accounts from beyond the Berlin Wall (the majority of course occurring prior to its 1989 collapse).

Whoa! Initially published in 2015, when Operation Car Wash was blowing its gaskets. Half memoir & all observatory, Extreme City throws wide the unique abhorrence & awesomeness of the beleaguered & siege-stricken prodigy that is Rio, & the greater country of Brazil. This is one of the best & most personal scribes I have streaked on the region (Soares is a carioca – “Rio born & bred”), reclining amongst the likes of Peter Robb’s A Death in Brazil & Misha Glenny’s excellent Nemesis.

An annual tradition – it’s the all new World Press Photo yearbook 2019!

FUCK!!!! it is worse than you think! speechless…. join the dots.

“Over the next few days the rebels were to bring the most powerful figures in England’s ruling class to their knees. Several of them, like the hated Arch Bishop of Canterbury Simon Sudbury and the King’s treasurer Sir Robert Hales were executed. Even as the rebellion was defeated in London, it was still spreading across England and it was only after months of repression, torture and execution that the ruling class regained control.”

“I saw the agony of capitalism and the dismantling of social civilization from a very particular point of view: crime and suicide.”

“Can forests think? Do dogs dream? In this astonishing book, Eduardo Kohn challenges the very foundation of anthropology, calling into question our very assumptions on what it means to be human – and thus distinct from all other lifeforms. Drawing on four years of ethnographic fieldwork among the Runa of Ecuador’s upper Amazon, Kohn explores how Amazonians interact with the many creatures that inhabit one of the world’s most complex ecosystems.”

A smashing debut from Scottish observer, pundit, commentator, rapper & social-activist Darren McGarvey (also known as Loki). His sphere? Let’s contract it to poverty-class-community, in which ever order you so desire. Growing up in Pollok, in south Glasgow with a whole heap of hard-knocks, Darren’s authority & experience outstands pretty much everybody in the spectrum at an elevated level (I can only really think of Stafford Scott, who actually doesn’t have as much access to established platforms).

“The black movement had made it clear that all authority was the enemy. And they were giving even the real peace-loving-hippies ideas – and that was scary. It was a loose joining together, a sort of convergence, however tenuous, and that was the real problem in those days. We had to get that rabbit back in the hat. It became an us and them thing.” – officer Len Colsky

”-particularly when they see how former high-ranking Bush administration officials who had advocated for overthrow of Saddam leveraged their government positions, contacts and insider knowledge to make huge fortunes from Iraqi and Kurdistan oil investments. Today, some of these very people continue to sit on the boards of, or have lucrative jobs as advisors to, the very same multinational oil firms.” Continue reading Pipe Dreams-the plundering of Iraq’s oil wealth (Erin Banco): →