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): →

Been waiting for this one. An absolutely splendorous debut from Patrick Winn, bloviating (almost four hundred pages!), without any monotony, on the intricate, seldom-covered anthro-cosm of modern South Asia & the litany of difficulties, crisis & threats facing this extraordinary region. This is an expanse of stupendous versatility & complexity, much of which gets almost no attention in the international press save the odd incident, – “On the mainland, militaristic Buddhist kingdoms abut a pseudo-communist regime that is, in fact, ravenously capitalistic. All this is half-encircled by a largely Islamic archipelago – one that terminates in islands beholden to the Vatican.” Continue reading Hello, Shadowlands: inside the meth fiefdoms, rebel hideouts and bomb-scarred party towns of southeast asia (Patrick Winn): →

“No other culture sends its young boys and girls away to school to prepare them for a role in the ruling class. – beating, bullying, fagging, cold baths, vile food and paedophile teachers are just some of the features of this elite education, and, while some children loved boarding school, others now admit to suffering life-altering psychological damage. – stiff upper lip exposes the hypocrisy, cronyism and conspiracy that are key to understanding the scandals over abuse and neglect in institutions all over the world.“ Continue reading Stiff Upper Lip-secrets, crimes and the schooling of a ruling class (Alex Renton): →