I discovered this book at Chatham House library. The front cover image of Arkan with his trademark white tiger gave away a lot of the subject detail of the book. It focuses on the war of the former Yugoslavia. Later in the work we touch upon the mass atrocities in other wars such as in Syria and Rwanda and also look at the Rohingya refugee crisis and the actions of Burma. Deep analyses of all sides of the Yugoslav conflict reveal patterns and structures of the killing machines that were let loose during that conflict, very often, like Arkan’s Tigers, paramilitary non-State actors, from which the overseeing central State political authorities could distance themselves so as to absolve themselves of legal blame for some of the excesses.
It is clear that the State was still involved and indirectly participated in some of the worst violence. Often State media built up on a pedestal the heroes of the conflict, the irregular formations and their lead commanders. It wasn’t just the Serbs that had irregular formations. The Croats expanded through militia and the police and Bosnians irregulars had their ranks filled with Jihadists from far afiled, a foreign influx of seasoned, in essence, Islamic terrorists.
The Bosnian situation was dire with the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats taking leave of command from their centres and, often at odds, going to the extreme, the culmination being the Srebenica massacre where Radovan Karadžić committed the genocide of 10000 Muslim civilians. Often it was the civilian populations that bore the brunt of the mass atrocities, regular armies, in general, sticking to the script of the international consensus of the rules of war.
The author looks at how the command structures are built up to allow these atrocities and micro-examines the causes of such inhumane brutality. There is crossover between State leaders, government, army, organized crime, paramilitaries, smugglers and football hooligans. The State does not tacitly recognise the authority to act of the irregular forces and thus can absolve itself of much of the blame although in the case of Bosnian leader, Alija Izetbegović, he was so obviously attached to the Muslim Jihadists and reliant on them despite him openly presenting as a European-style leader. Slobodan Milošević was more evasive in his political grandstanding and deceptive and presented a unified front to the outside world. Here is a good quote from the book:
‘Brendan Simms exposed what he called British ‘Serbophilia’ in his unforgiving indictment of Britain’s failed Bosnia policy. He argues that what was seen as Serbian military spit-and-polish, in contrast to the ‘rag-tag’ Bosnian Muslims, helped persuade British decision makers that the Serbian establishment were people the British could continue to do business with.’
The public mood globally, after Bosnia, had shifted and in ways in which the author describes an essential way in which to avoid mass atrocities, the international public outcry caused the world to intervene so as to prevent further atrocities in Kosovo.
I enjoyed learning in detail the more intricate, if brutal elements of the conflict and it is a detailed study of what until Ukraine had been the largest conflict on European soil since World War 2. Late on in the book, the author, Kate Ferguson, goes on to look at other arenas and I feel that she could indeed have written separate books for each of these spheres.
I hope to purchase a copy of this book once I return it to the library as it will be useful for future reference.
This is just another one of the many books I’ve read on the security services / spies / intelligence agencies in general. I guess I have a morbid fascination. Non-fiction throws up some pretty weird stuff – Life itself is a lot stranger than fiction. This tale from a turncoat ex MI5 employee David Shayler, comes from a time of great change in the world, Security Services in general and it interests me in particular as I was living down in London at that specific time and had what I believe to be my own brush with Shayler’s employers. It was at a time (in history) when people still bought and read daily newspapers and not just get all their news information off Donald Trump’s twitter feed. I can distinctly remember all the controversial headlines about the whole affair.
The book is written by some Daily Mail journalists, a sort of hive for some of the smelliest sort of flies that the tabloid journalist industry attracts so automatically I was on my guard as to the agenda and the sort of bias, provocation, and fascist ideology of the book. Also, let’s get one thing straight. David Shayler is not a hero like they might try to portray him as, he’s not even an anti-hero. He’s just a sort of bo standard below-average MI5 officer, a disgruntled employee, a whistleblower. He knows what he’s signed up to by applying for the job in the first place, by successfully passing the vetting and by being offered a position. I think the Official Secrets Act as much as anyone may find it repulsive and disagree with it is pretty clear and explicit in what it states. Basically Shayler is a criminal and this book is evidence of his crime. He’s broken the Official Secrets Act, he’s also clearly committed treason and although he perhaps lacks the glamour of those that have gone before him such a Kim Philby, he’s certainly nothing more than traitor scum acting against the interests of this country which is exactly what MI5 or their employees are not supposed to be doing. Mi5 is their to protect the nation and yes, the job is difficult but I think the outset that Shayler has failed totally to appreciate the patriotic element of the work. It may have changed since the cold War and be [perhaps a little more boring, but it will adapt like many other industries and indeed since the time of publication MI5 has adapted, facing a new enemy is Islamic terror and the end of the Cold War has proven only really to be a brief ceasefire as the Russians are now back on the scene added to which a growing threat from China makes MI5 an even more critiical organization in the contemporary (and future) world.
I hold the whole message that Shayler and the writers are trying to present as completely invalid and very easy to discount. Zero sympathy for him. Nobody should be reading his revelations. Yes maybe a private letter to the MI5 boss would have been OK. But selling your story to the Daily Mail and anyone else with a chequebook? At least Kim Philby was sort of driven by ideology and is therefore it’s much more easy to identify with him. Shayler just basically wanted a nice comfy hug payout so he didn’t have to worry about his mortgage. Selfish capitalist. Thatcherist, blinkered self-aggrandisement and totally free of ethics and morality. About as close as we get to James Bond his little escape to France where his greed catches up with him and he eventually gets raided and arrested by the French authorities He was probably given a nice comfie bed and a constant supply of fresh croissants out there, just in case and It wasn’t corruption or anything like injustice. He was a serious wanted criminal and that is what INTERPOL etc is set up to sort out. Cheered me up when he finally got to Belmarsh. I’m tempted to look up his wiki but to see where he is now but it will just annoy me further.
He’s an anonymous dot in a big blob and the secrecy of the work, yes it’s underpaid, difficult and the whole system and organization is frankly sh*t but so is everything else in #brokenbritain and has been for a long time. It’s reality. You don’t get to cut corners in life. Just a buy a lottery ticket like anyone else – I’m glad the sort of celebrity tabloid culture has removed a lot of power from the redtops with their lottery payout bribes to corrupt people and deliver huge sales. The British Press is by far the biggest threat to National Security we have. Greed and capitalism has turned them into the most sinister devious body of enemies ever produced on this island. They will stop at nothing to subvert Britain, the Commonwealth or the Empire. Just examining a tiny of fraction of Prince Harry’s valiant quest against them seeking justice is total proof of their treachery. Shame Murdoch didn’t holiday with Maxwell and the rest really as Davy Jones’ locker seems the best place for them all.
Well, looking directly at the book, Shayler claims MI5 cocked up IRA city of London attacks, He claims through word-of-mouth secondary information about an assassination plot by the British government on Colonel Gaddafi – Yes, well, Mr Shayler, Gadaffi (now dead of course), may have certain human rights etc but after Lockerbie he’s pretty much clear as an enemy of the British people and State. That’s who MI5 and MI6 and GCHQ are supposed to be targeting really. I was gutted that you didn’t take the offer by the Libyan intelligence service to clear off to Tripoli, would have made a much more exciting tale, one way or the other.
It’s no recruitment manual for MI5, further justification that the actual job is absolutely nothing at all like a James Bond film. The appendix 2 of Shayler’s recommendations for organizational change, probably the most boring tract of text I’ve ever read, but is great in clarifying just what a hideous corporate body of bureaucratic bungling the MI5 security service is. I can see why MI5 officers can be so deadly effective and dangerous if they are spending 23 and half hours chained up to a desk under a pile of paperwork and government forms then I guess that for the half hour allocated break where they get to do the glamorous work in high speed car chases, staking the State’s budget on roulette spins and copping off with foreign birds etc, they are going to be so angry and wound up and pissed off that they’ll pretty much take out all their frustrations on any target and cause serious destructive damage.
Some of the revelations were significant like how much financial wastage there is. An example is the £25 million spent on an amateur computer system that didn’t work and that they had to go out and buy an off the shelf version of Microsoft Windows 95 to sort out the IT in this critical department of National Security shows clearly that mismanagement is very possible and real.
I think that it does clarify the need for change and that there are serious inadequacies and probably worse than a standard government civil service department I think that we could maybe look to other countries and the way they handle their intelligence services. The CIA and Mossad, for example, are vastly different. In many ways they have more liberty and power and more open and more effective. Our secrecy laws are a bit archaic. There is most certainly a lack of balances and checks in place for our intelligence services that would limit abuses, enable necessary change and improve efficiency and productivity and better achieve the desired goal of national security. I think that for this country James Bond is quite a double-edged sword. Whereas on the one hand it is a very positive and successful (fictional) brand, I would argue it is the very epitome of global espionage propaganda achievement, par excellence. Equally it is quite old now and it must entangle the intelligence services in manacles really and be very frustrating. Deception works to a point but needs to be balanced a bit with reality, openness and honesty.
I think looking back that even though it was pretty damned boring, that Dame Stella Rimington, as head of MI5 who released a boo, that this book was actually a watershed moment and an historic change in methodology for MI5. Yes, Ok we end up with the sort of Shayler trash a s a result. But is signals that change is happening.
I feel like a nosey idiot myself for contributing to the obvious treason of Shayler et all by purchasing the book. But it is an interesting read and I think might, if used properly, be useful to enact change. It must be a very popular text out in the Kremlin in Moscow or Pyongyang or Beijing or the Afghan Cave complex. It demonstrates weakness to our enemies, possible exploits and perhaps encourages hostile attacks on out nation. But it’s subject an idiot who I highly doubt had much access at all to any form of high-level security information. Vetting system is broken obviously. What to do about it aside from the recommended changes – well, really push the death penalty for treason to properly discourage future Shaylers – Hanging, drawing and quartering must have a value aside from public entertainment. I discount most of the so-called scandal and I’m pretty confident that although there have been mishaps and errors that MI5 in fact do actually run an effective security service with regard to domestic issues. The lack of serious security incidents on British soil is testament to their work being efficient.
I think everyone that has ever heard of Boris Johnson associates him with lies. Oborne, who is an established veteran political journalist, in this relatively brief text, exposes the extent of the former Conservative Prime Minister’s almost total aversion to the truth. He reckons Johnson has told over thousands of lies and although the scope of the book is not to document every single lie and prove it is a lie, it just gives a brief overview of some of the worst and most notorious of these lies, especially those told in Parliament. Oborne believes and I think quite justly that by undermining the integrity of Parliament where under the Ministerial Code of Conduct it clearly states the rules with regard to any false information being given by an MP to be a serious breach. The problem of policing this is brought into question and the lack of proper discipline seems to have only encouraged Johnson to continue to bring the whole institution of government into disrepute.
In an act of political neutrality Oborne compares Boris’ lies with those told my Tony Blair, especially regarding the second Iraq war. He also mentions that Bill Clinton was a proven liar. Angela Merkel fairs more favourably with her poor East German background, hard-working ethics, and scientific rigour contrasting with Johnson’s privileged, elitist Etonian, comedy gaff brush-offs and aloofness. Donald Trump is seen as a mentor and the Atlantic relationship seems to have been convenient for both in their endless quest for omnipotent control of media and disregard for traditional political values, even those values inherent in their own parties. Oborne acknowledges the extremism of Trump but equates Boris’ vile lies to be on a par, if somewhat disguised within the bounds of British society.
When illustrating an example of a lie, Oborne is careful with regard to defamation laws, to provide footnote examples and often internet links with proof of the lie. He often refers to his own extensive website that documents more fully the comprehensive voluminous curriculum vitae of Boris Johnson’s lies.
I won’t spoil the book for the reader in this review to give examples of the many lies. Suffice it to say there are the obvious ones you probably know already plus some that escaped the radar of many including me. I don’t think it’s anything for Boris to be proud of and it will most probably be a long time before the integrity of Parliament and trust of the voting public is regained. A shameful legacy for a Prime Minister.
Alev Scott is a young female Brit whose mother has Turkish Cypriot roots and in this great study of modern turkey she relocates to Istanbul and immerses herself as much as possible in Turkish society Long time leader Erdogan, has done a lot to change Turkey in the past couple of decades in which he has held power. Some of it has gone down well but there has also been a great deal of controversy. At present, Turkish politics is in the headlines as Turks go to the polls to vote in a general election and it is predicted to be very close with Erdogan’s long reign very much under threat.
The book detail s a lot of the change and how on the one hand Turkish life is so radically different from the London Scott grew up in but on the other hand how Westernised and modern this bridge state between Europe and Asia is. We look at not just the political angle but also the social angle and the role of women in Turkish society, the religious aspect of life here and also more peculiar idiosyncrasies of Turkey.
It surprised me to learn how Erdogan, who stands on the political right has re-invigored Islamic values in Turkey, contrasting with the post-Ataturk secular legacy that has really been bringing Turkey much closer to Europe over the past century. This was one of the main aims of the great Kemal Ataturk’s legacy for his beloved nation. Turkish accession to the EU is, however, still on the brink, and no closer to happening with the modern politicians tending to look for other options and a closer relationship with the Middle East and Islamic World seems to be quite appetising, not forgetting ties with the controversial Russia who use Turkish tourism and finance significantly the Turkish economy. Headscarves have been allowed back in public spaces, including universities and schools and on the whole, the public are utilising the opportunity to visually demonstrate their devotion and integrating well with those remaining Turks who stick to the secular traditions.
The Gezi Park protests that filled international news programmes are covered in detail and it is quite bizarre how such a minor incident got totally out of control and the brutal response from the government seemed quite dangerously totalitarian and scarily undemocratic with police looking quite nasty lot. I’m sure that Gezi Park will still feature heavily in the minds of voters in the forthcoming elections.
The economy is addressed and I enjoyed hearing about the cultural importance of the Turkish barber as there are many Turkish barbers in the local Welsh village where I live and I think that they are great social places and friendly and I can see why they are so highly regarded in Turkey proper. Some of the wealthy Turkish business leaders seem very extravagant and overall it seems as though business in Turkey is quite thriving although perhaps slightly different compared with business in other large states such as London or New York where a more brazen form of capitalism exists.
We look at not just life in the big city of Istanbul but also venture out to the provinces and hear about the Kurdish issue. It seems as though the future of the Armenian and Kurdish issues seems to be a bit more closer to a peaceful resolution with new generations feeling less aggrieved by historical incidents and more keenly identifying as Turks However, there is still marginalisation and tensions.. Rural life is a lot more conservative and traditional and there is a difference yet it isn’t so radically strange which pleasantly surprises the author. I lied hearing about the local vegetable sellers, challenging the supermarkets with their neighbourhood market square one man stalls, totally supported by elderly housewives and a cornerstone of the suburban communities.
We venture into the bizarre with some cultural treasures such as camel wrestling, take a look at the mobs of passionate Turkish football fans, explore transsexual prostitution in Istanbul, the dangers of the PKK and Islamic State and war in Syria and also the move towards Islam playing a more integral and open part of society.
Turkey maintains an exotic appeal to Westerners and I identify this in this exploration of Turkish culture. It is a powerful nation set in a critical geographical junction between East and West. Perhaps Ataturk would be disappointed to learn of the move away from his secular state but I don’t think that this is a problem and it could make Turkey appeal even more to foreigners and help them develop and grow their still relatively young nation. The author does well in giving a good analysis of what it is to be a Turk and to cross-examine the culture , politics and economy of a wonderful and interesting place.
Thomas Paine is an important writer at an important time that bequeaths us in his ‘Rights of Man’ a fundamental shakeup of what our democratic rights as citizens should be, drawing especially on the French Revolution and also American Revolution and the fundamental rights that their new revolutionary societies produced for their citizens. Paine delivers during the Enlightenment a wake up call to those in countries that are yet to adapt to revolutions, where traditional Royal power and political representation in not so clear democratic institutions abide. Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his ‘Social Contract’ fanned the flames of the French Revolution of 1789 and his words rang in the ears of revolutionaries right down the the last blood spilt buy the Guillotine. It was a period of political pamphleteering and Paine was no stranger to this. He was in essence the Rousseau of the English-speaking world. The thinking behind his work and through other similar political philosophers of the Enlightenment was that the American and French revolutions were no anomalies and that they were just the precursor of more to come and that like dominoes, the Monarchies of Europe were destined to topple and follow suit, paving the way for more liberty and Bills of Rights and written constitutions that would empower the masses across the globe in the dawn of a new age. It is indeed quite bizarre that the predictions of Paine et al never actually materialised. Indeed one of his main target audiences, here in the U.K., has remained almost identical politically to the present with a dual chamber of elected representatives and hereditary peers behind an historical monarch as head of state. Paine explores the rights for citizens as laid out by the French and also details the new American constitution and what it means to the general citizen. The points he makes and the evidence truly is eye-opening and remarkable and it does seem appealing. He directly contrasts the new legal rights in these revolutionary societies with the lack of actual rights we have in places like Britain. Paine elucidates a very powerful argument against hereditary political empowerment, reaching up to the King or Queen themselves. He often attacks his rival Edmund Burke who in his own literary offerings, is critical of both revolutions and defends the merits of the British system. Indeed his obsession with Mr Burke somewhat detracts from some of the points about the Rights of Man that Paine is attempting to transmit. When weighed up it isn’t as crystal clear as an obviously biased Pain might suggest and indeed he, is his complete acceptance and as
a disciple of the new systems, almost suffered some of the more bloodies and brutal aspects of the new revolutionary societies as he only escaped being guillotined in Paris by the skin of his teeth during the height of The Terror. I am surprised that Paine managed to write this in the first place at such a tumultuous period of history. Indeed in his native Britain his work must have been viewed by the authorities with treasonous contempt. It is a controversial and powerful book to readers today and I can see why it is celebrated as a cornerstone work for human rights and politics. I dread to think just how controversial and revolutionary it must have been to the many readers of the ‘Rights of Man’ during the period from whence it sprung.
This book is quite old, first published in 1951, it dates from a period when the totalitarian reality of Hitler and Stalin were very much fresh in the mind. Hannah Arendt was a German Jew and this work is both philosophical, enlightening and gives a valuable educated insight into the dark political reality of totalitarianism. It’s a relatively modern political phenomenon and the in depth analysis of the German Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler in addition to the Communist Soviet regime under Josef Stalin demonstrates how totalitarianism can come from the political extreme of either side of the left-right axis of politics.
The first part of the book looks at the origins of anti-semitism. This was a focus of the rise of the totalitarianist states under both Hitler and Stalin, with both leaders showing similar anti-Jew tendencies, Hitler going to the extreme measures of the Holocauust which killed 6 million Jews during World War 2 and indeed his whole philiosophy, rooted in Mein Kempf was aimed at the total destruction of the Jewish Race. Arendt as a Jew does not give a based one way account of anti-semitism. It is such a controversial thing, a bête-noire to this day with the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbot just recent examples of modern British politicians flagged for it. Arendt, surprisingly, gives a 50-50 reasoned account of its origins, blaming not just the extreme racist political drives to promote it, but looking at the Jews themselves and allocating some of the blame for anti-semitism with them. The failure to adapt to mainstream societies and to remain a state within a state and also very markedly she decries the role of court Jew that was so prominent in European aristocratic circles to have been a major factor in provoking the anger of the likes of Hitler who in Mein Kampf made a targeted attack on the Jews of Vienna.
The second part of the book looks at Imperialism and the rise of nationalism in the European Nation States and a general shift in politics. This paves the way for the later emergence of Hitler and Stalin to live out the realities of the inevitable totalitarian extremism that all along was at the end of the pathway that was being carefully paved out for them to step into.
On to Part 3 where we have a detailed analysis of both Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler and the Communist Soviet Union with Stalin as dictator. Totalitarianism transcends the mere extreme Fascist politics of other dictators that one might have thought would enter into the category. General Franco or Benito Mussolini were fascists aligned with the far right Nazis but there whole societies still maintained certain elements of democracy and therefore they do not slip into the category of totalitarianIsm proper. Also, Post Revolution Russia, under Lenin, was not as extreme and centred around a one man dictatorship that the extremes of Josef Stalin brought to the table in the Kremlin.
The characteristics of totalitarianism involve a deep web of deceit and propaganda and the truth is constantly subject to change. Control by the State of every aspect of the individual in private, public life is total. Any form of dissidence meets with the most brutal of punishment. All is at the whim of the absolute leader without whom the whole of the state and society cannot survive. It’s extreme insanity and it seems unbelievable how it manifested into reality but the truth is there for all to see in the history books. Indeed one could argue that since Arendt we have seen more totalitarianism in the Communist China and North Korea, one could argue that Boris Johnson’ Britain has many totalitarian characteristics.
The ultimate tool of the totalitarian dictators was the concentration camps under Hitler and the Gulag under Stalin. These are discussed and are obviously horrific. Also, both dictators weren’t averse top meting out capital punishment to any sign of internal or external enemies. Purges and liquidations feature as a core part of totalitarian societies.
Orwell has been one of the most significant authors to have famously demonstrated totalitarianism. The likes of “Animal Farm’ and ‘1984’ are cornerstones of modern literature. But they are works of fiction. What Arendt achieves is an academic study of the realities of totalitarianism as it has manifested in recent twentieth century history. She looks at the facts on the ground, the reality, rather than a dystopia from the imagination. The stark reality of totalitarianism is far worse than any author can imagine.
I’ve had a 26 year war against the British State, being a victim of the Mental Health Act 1983 and a revolving door patient within State Psychiatric hospitals with the local NHS being totally backed up by an excessively violent local police force. I feel that none of my democratic rights have been upheld. For years I have wondered about whether or not a text exists that can explain the deep feelings that I have, knowing the extreme feeling of injustice, absolute helplessness and an often invasive imprisonment in horrific surroundings. Having discovered Arendt, I have now found this book – she puts into words that which I have experienced and her shocking academic study of totalitarianism is indeed a factual reality in the U.K. even if it is well hidden and may seem like a delusional claim.
“Their real secret, the concentration camps, those laboratories in the experiment of total domination, is shielded by the totalitarian regimes from the eyes of their own people as well as from all others.
For a considerable length of time the normality of the normal world is the most efficient protection against disclosure of totalitarian mass crimes. ‘Normal men don’t know that everything is possible’, refuse to believe their eyes and ears in the face of the monstruous, just as the mass men did not trust theirs in the face of a normal reality in which no place was left for them. The reason why the totalitarian regimes can get so far forward realizing a fictitious, topsy-turvy world is that the outside nontotalitarian world, which always comprises a great part of the population of the totalitarian country itself, indulges also in wishful thinking and shirks reality in the face of real insanity just as much as the masses do in the face of the normal world. This common-sense disinclination to believe the monstruous is constantly strengthened by the totalitarian ruler himself, who makes sure that no reliable statistics, no controllable facts and figures are ever published, so that there are only subjective, uncontrollable, and unreliable reports about the places of the living dead.” (Arendt, H. 1951:571-2)
This book is genuinely one of the best literary works that I have ever studied and I will refer back to it. It is a dark subject but equally an important one and it is an important work and should be read widely as it provides the necessary warnings about the dangers that extreme politics can produce in our world.
What’s a grown 45 year old male doing reading a little Bosnian girl’s diary you might ask yourself. Well, it cropped up as a recommendation in a documentary on the war in the former Yugoslavia, a subject to which I have passionately researched from its genesis. The Balkans conflict is (to date) the worst conflict that has taken place on European soil since World War 2 (although Ukraine must now be heading to take over that mantle, perhaps? Let’s hope not!). There was some pretty brutal stuff going on and a complete breakdown of society, the break up of a nation and all the murky, dirty traits of war nationalism, ethnic division, race and religion, all went up in smoke and Sarajevo was the epicentre of the whole mess, where little Zlata was a carefree little schoolgirl, and had her life turned upside down, directly experiencing the day to day hell of living through war. When you think of war, you think of soldiers, tanks, battlefields, munitions, generals and lots of death and injuries. The history books are full of tactical analysis of military commanders’ strategies and details of who won and who lost and what the politicians were doing. Often it is the collateral damage that is the worst in the war. The inhabitants of London’s East End felt the blitz more than the pilots of the Battle of Britain. Zlata is a normal girl, with a normal family, just getting on with a normal life. She is a civilian. When the bombs start raining down, Zlata is right there on the scene. Her neighbours are affected. It is her streets that are the battleground. Her school is closed and her friends are either killed or flee the terrible tragedy that is unfolding on her doorstep in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This is where a lot of the worst of the ethnic divisions are apparent with Bosnian-Serbs fighting Bosnian-Croats, Muslims and a previous harmony among the population is cast out for some terrible tragic results, well-documented later in war-crimes cases such as the Srebenica massacre. Zlata is the Anne Frank of the Balkans War. She notes in ‘Mimmy’ a primary account that no historian should ignore. Ye, it’s sad, yes, it’s heart-breaking and war is something that nobody should have to live through. But when war does happen, the importance of documentation is critical and Zlata leaves her testament as a warning for future warmongers and future victims of war and survivors. It wouldn’t hurt some of the politicians and war industry profiteers involved in the current Ukraine crisis to pick up a copy of Zlata’s diary. It’s a kid’s book, written by a kid. It’s not long, won’t take up too much of your time. But by heck it could transform your thinking and opinion to the betterment of all of society. Daily struggles for water supply and gas and electric are sounding to me in 2023 as quite realistic possibilities for my own future in the U.K. (I’m told as a result of war) – Coping mechanisms are great. Zlata does get upset, but rarely depressed. She has a transcendental philosophy and sees in the most simplest of basic provisions or freedoms a ray of sunshine in the midst of the dirty tragedy that is unfolding all around her. Ultimately, her writing work is not in vain. French journalists pick up on the diary and TV crews start popping in to see her and ultimately after securing a publishing deal for the diary, Zlata and her family are flown out and repatriated in Paris, thus escaping them from further direct immediate harm from the war. Not every young diary writer was perhaps so lucky as Zlata, bhut it’s amazing that she did manage to get the book out there and it is a bestseller. I just wonder how many little girls are hiding in the blackened ruins of apartment blocks in Mariupol, their only lifeline and hope being pencilled into their own diaries. Adrian Mole talked about pimples. Zlata has a more grown up conversation but she also likes cats and playing the piano. I remember first seeing the live story about Zlata on Blue Peter. It’s taken me a while to get around to reading Zlata’s Diary but I am glad that I have now done that.
I was just chatting away to Ionutz a security nurse in the local mental hospital and he’s Romanian. I passed through Bucharest a few years ago en route to Istanbul on a train journey traversing Eastern Europe. Romania seemed quite rural, poor and quite different to the Europe with which I am more acquainted. Curiosity and a quick Amazon search later and I’ve got this rare gem of a book in my hands documenting the life of former Communist Dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena.
General Pacepa was the most high-ranking Eastern Bloc Communist official ever to defect during the Cold War so is an enigma in himself. From his final destination, in hiding in the USA, he delivered this brutal revelatory biographic diary of his life serving Romanian Communist Dictator, Nicolae Ceaucescu. Ceausescu, with his equally flamboyant wife, Elena, had succeeded in setting up a hereditary Communist dictatorship in the Soviet satellite start of Romania. As a geographic outlier on the borders of the Iron Curtain with the democratic West, Ceausescu used his country’s position to ‘bridge the gap’ between East and West. He resisted domination from the Kremlin, while parading Romania as a model Communist economy that was open to doing business with the West, thus gaining favoured status as an economic trade partner with powerful Western technological superpowers such as the USA. His regime though, was very brutal and oppressive. Propaganda allowed for a portrayal of high living standards and decent human rights, but this was just a falsified portrait for Western consumption. The reality was that to the extent of comparability with the GDR East German Stasi, Ceausescu succeeded in implementing a secret police directorate-driven paranoid surveillance state where every form of monitoring of almost the entire population in the form of bugged phone calls, informant networks, sexual blackmail, really left the Romanian people in a state of absolute totalitarianism. As head of the DIE, Romanian Foreign Intelligence, General Pacepa was an integral core potentate within the inner circle of the regime, acting pretty much as Ceausescu’s personal valet and being asked to do some pretty extreme and very weird things on behalf of the tyrannical, quite frankly insane, dictator despot and his even more eccentric excessive, out-of-control wife. I wonder about the actual bias inherent in such a task as this project due to the obvious political ramifications of such a scandalous publication. On the one hand the whistle-blower Pacepa is bound to have his own personal political agenda and let’s face it, his professional role made him very suitable for the dissemination of propaganda. Yet, on the other hand, the frank and ludicrous absurdity of the revelations about Ceausescu’s life within the text make sense as truth. Fact is often more deranged than fiction and some of these stories just lie outside the realm of the most fantasy-orientated author of fiction. Therefore I find most of what is written to be true, with a lack of other readily available information to counter the claims that have been made.
Ceausescu’s politics are pretty odd. Content with absolute power within his own communist party he is extremely ignorant and rude with regard to the advice of his ministers and even Pacepa. Power is totally concentrated at his own whim and he is left to explore his own paranoid idiosyncrasies with zero resistance. He loves getting stuck into foreign affairs and has a tendency of association with some pretty odd bedfellows: Yasser Arafat, Colonel Gadaffi, Carlos the Jackal are a few characters that appear in the book. He sees himself as a potential saviour of the Middle East and whereas he tries his best to avoid all oversight from Moscow centre, he is most capable in representing the Soviet Bloc in dealings with the West, providing a lot of really useful intelligence for the Warsaw Pact bloc. Indeed technical intelligence is a particular focus of the DIE, with a lot of Romanian espionage efforts focussed on the procuring of industrial and military technology secrets from the West that can be emulated in cheap Romanian manufactures. A lot of success is achieved in military equipment stolen from NATO such as tanks and also state of the art surveillance equipment. Ceaucescu travels a lot and his adventures in Washington on a state visit to Jimmy Carter is perhaps the highlight of the book. Ceausescu is so paranoid he will only eat his own food, prepared by his own chef with vast amounts of money spent on importing all his own food and expensive wine on any excursion at home or abroad. He is totally shocked by democratic protests in New York City against his regime and cannot seem to grasp how on earth these protests can take place. He really isn’t used to hearing dissident voices against his tyranny and it deeply traumatises him. Indeed one of his personal bugbears that runs throughout the book are the attacks made upon his rule by Radio Free Europe and he devotes a lot of time in attempting to eradicate this voice of democracy, an irritant to many Communist regimes. He is not afraid to order assassinations and the very fact he doles out work to the most notorious terrorist assassin, Carlos the Jackal, says it all. Elena’s story is one unto itself and whole book could really be devoted to her peccadillos which when it comes to diamonds and expensive Paris fashion would make even Marie-Antoinette seem normal. Pacepa is tasked with funnelling large amounts of Romanian foreign reserve into the hands of expensive boutique to stock up Elena’s extensive wardrobes. She also has a rather unhealthy fetish for watching pornographic movies, made by the security services, of illicit affairs of important Romanian government ministers, in order to create blackmail dossiers to either purge or totally control their loyalty to the dictator. The Ceausescu’s family are odd in the extreme. Preferred son, Nicu, really just an out and out drunken yob who, secure in his future inheritance is already planning ahead and Pacepa is often the mediator who has to dig him out of some pretty horrendous violent scrapes.
Unfortunately the book stops after Pacepa defects and there are a good few years of the regime left until its bitter end in 1989. It would have been nice to have seen this period documented in full also. Pacepa has a dreadful personal sacrifice to make in leaving his home nation as he cannot take his daughter with him. Ultimately we know the story of Ceausescu and his wife’s end. They were rare victims of violence in an otherwise surprisingly peaceful transition to democracy as the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 1980s. Ceausescu and Elena were captured by an angry mob and after a brief show trial, were summarily executed by firing squad at Christmas in 1989. I think that this book would have fuelled the anger of the Romanian people towards their dictator and would have certainly served as kindling for the fire that destroyed them. Nicolae and Elena were more extreme than the most despotic Royal families of history and it is no real surprise that their lives were so brutally exterminated.
This book is about a promoter’s journey in the beginnings of the Acid House music scene that took over Great Britain back in the late 1980s, cementing a new popular culture that would grip the masses of rebellious youth at the end of a prolonged period of Thatcherism. Genesis is run by Wayne Anthony, the author of this book. In it he incandescently writes an emotional, truthful and honest tale of a rather strange journey that would shock the average person. As a later promoter in the acid house music scene I could relate to many of the experiences one gets when running events and I found the book to be a great memoir of an often overlooked music movement after it was so successfully repressed shortly after its foundation by the 1994 Criminal Justice Bill. Genesis began by breaking into warehouses in East London that were disused. Sound systems would be set up, blissful decor applied top the venue and impromptu bars set up. A top security firm was always necessary for the promoter as vast amounts of cash would be made by Acid House Warehouse parties attracting thousands of clubbers. From the outset Wayne is running a constant battle against the authorities. The police initially are caught a bit unawares and Wayne can hone his blagging skills to great effect with false contracts drawn up and police not no driven to break up the illegal events as they were pretty clueless as to what was happening. As time progressed and the media driven frenzy about the dangers of ecstasy and the wild nature of acid house in the U.K., these police armed with more government powers became more hostile and violent towards organisers. The security firm was mainly ex military and the whole operations of running the early Genesis events by Wayne and his team were arranged with military style precision, from cutting edge party phone numbers, to vast flyer distribution, to electrical engineers, co-ordinating a synchronised arrival of guests to each event and ensuring that trouble and accidents were kept to a minimum. Genesis teamed up with the likes of Biology and also with Fantasy FM and were a major force in the London scene. Wayne is very candid about the drugs involved in acid house and we hear of wild cash excesses at the events leading to mass quantities of cocaine. He eulogises about ecstasy and its life-changing effects and its influence on the culture of the nation yet also, later in the book he does acknowledge that he suffers from most of the major mental health effects of long term ecstasy use that had been foreseen by doctors in the early days. He predicts a future generation of 50 something mental patients whose heads are completely shot! A particular acid experience involving an ex girlfriend going completely off the rails indicates some of the potential dangers of narcotics use. Wayne concludes with advice to youngsters not to make the same mistakes with chemicals and that they can have more productive lives and indeed enjoy dance music culture just as much without all the add-on chemicals. Some of the incidences involving organised crime kidnapping him and also promoters hijacking events by pretending to be Genesis, and also the constant battle against police show some of the darker issues that many promoters are faced with. We see early dance music political activity in demonstrations by the masses to fight for party rights. I loved the tales of DJs and early house music records that I know very well and it was great hearing a real account of the hedonistic days of the ‘Class of 88’ which unfortunately I was a bit too young to experience in the full sense, only coming into the British U.K. music scene properly in the mid 1990s.
I’ve read three of Che Guevara’s other books, the theory on guerrilla warfare and the diaries of his campaigning in the revolutions of Cuba and Bolivia. The Motorcycle Diaries precede these other critical works and document Che’s travels across Latin America as a young man, accompanied by his close Argentinian friend, Alberto Granado. The diaries document the adventure as the pair set out on a trusty old motorcycle from home in Córdoba in Argentina heading through the various landscapes of Chile, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela. Halfway through the journey the bike irreparably breaks down and they continue by means of improvisation, hitching rides, catching buses, boats and hiking. The descriptive emotions of the natural beauty of the continent is felt in Che’s descriptive wonder – the mountains, the rainforest, the rivers, the villages and towns…. all an exotic tapestry of inspiration for the young doctors. They run on a tight budget and rely heavily on the graciousness of hospitality coming from hosts eager to meet and get to know the Argentinian protagonists. Often these hosts are generous beyond all imagination and can ill afford to treat the guests as they are peasants from poorer nations. The rich characters we meet on the journey add to the emotive feeling and from conversations about a range of topics we can see a sense of social justice emerging in the young Che and the perceived injustices anger him and one can sense the development of his future as a key communist leader and revolutionary. The lads use their medical skills to visit a host of leper colonies and most, especially patients in these dismal places are surprised at the young medics’ lack of discrimination, openness and generosity. I especially enjoyed reading about the mystical Inca kingdom of Peru with its ancient capital of Cuzco and the visit to world-renowned tourist site, the ruins of Machu Picchu. I don’t think I’d be brave enough to undertake such a vast adventure on such a low-string budget and to overcome the struggles that evolve. I think this whole experience would have helped shaped Che’s immense resolve and success as a guerrilla fighter, battling the odds in the Sierra Maestra. A romantic revolutionary describing a period and era of time and space where hope and change across Latin America was imminent.
Wez G Books 
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