By chance rather than choice, I came across Ma Jian sometime in early 2017, settling on Red Dust, which sounded like a rollicking document of a largely lost China through the eyes of a wayward humanitarian, much like Gao Xingjian’s staggering Soul Mountain (a book of great importance to me). Continue reading China Dream (Ma Jian):
An absolute smasher here. Surfeit, vigorously meticulous & painstakingly crammed, this is a resoundingly impressive repository on these two somewhat exceptional countries & their historic rivalry. Continue reading Cold War in the Islamic World-Saudi Arabia, Iran and the struggle for supremacy (Dilip Hiro):
“candidly speaking, we are not interested in peace, as this concept is understood by the general public. As the ultimate of right-wing messianists, we look forward to the Redemption, to [ruling over the] true Whole Land of Israel, from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates … [and] this integrity will undoubtedly be attained through conquest and wars.” – Noam Livnat Continue reading Murder in the Name of God-the plot to kill Yitzhak Rabin (Michael Karpin & Ina Friedman):
ho ho & ha ha. We insist on dystopia. Decline, deterioration, invalidation & expanding disability. Less capable, able, cognizant human beings, but faster & more powerful machines with a continually pervading reliance & prevalence that becomes despotic, as abstaining or avoiding technological/computerized participation becomes practically impossible. Continue reading New Dark Age-technology and the end of the future (James Bridle):
“The real catalyst for the shale revolution was… the 2008 financial crisis and the era of unpredictably low interest rates it ushered in.”
“if companies were forced to live within the cash flow they produce, U.S. oil would have grown at a quarter to half the rate that it has.”
“You can make the argument that the federal reserve is entirely responsible for the fracking boom.” Continue reading Saudi America-the truth about fracking and how it’s changing the world (Bethany McLean):
Not since 2011’s landmark Broken Republic publication by author & activist Arundhati Roy have we had such an acute insight into India’s Naxalite guerrillas, brought to us now from anthropologist Alpa Shah. This is the world’s longest running ‘armed revolutionary movement’, having over half a century of activity/resistance (I think becoming operational officially in 1967). Continue reading Night March-among India’s revolutionary guerrillas (Alpa Shah):
“The point is that the American Dream was once a collective ideal, not an individualist one. Then it was reduced from a political dream of egalitarian democracy to an individual dream of opportunity, and then that further devolved to mere materialism.” Continue reading Behold, America-a history of America First and the American Dream (Sarah Churchewell):
‘Going to Oxford University from an inner-city comprehensive school was like landing on another planet, one populated by strange people in bow ties with no concept of what it’s like to live in the real world.’ Continue reading Posh Boys-how the English public schools ruin Britain (Robert Verkaik):
“When someone takes a beating or gets killed by police, city bureaucracies go into siege mode, reflexively stalling and delaying at every turn. The patience of complainants and their families is stretched to the limit. Embarrassing information, if it ever comes out, comes out years later, long after the streets have calmed down.” Continue reading I Can’t Breathe-the killing that started a movement (Matt Taibbi):
Jonathan Miller brings us the first biography on homicidal mayor turned mass murdering populist dictator Rodrigo “The Punisher” Duterte. Martial law, extra judicial killings (EJK’s), murky & nondescript rampaging death-squads & excessively-crass n’ crude expletive-lumbered vocal attacks on anything deemed challenging, annoying, non-compliant et-al. A leader in egregious authoritarian bollocks basically. As funny as this foul-tongued psycho is, the body count makes it less amusing – “On day one, he launched a Latin America-styled ‘Dirty War’, and with it introduced the darkest of Latino shadows: the death squad. By the end of year one, he was presiding over the largest loss of life in Southeast Asia since Pol Pot took Cambodia back to Year Zero”. Continue reading Duterte Harry-fire and fury in the Philippines (Jonathan Miller):