Financial Chaos

A sample of articles I have read over the last week about the unravelling US financial market: “…there’s also been a fairly impressive amount of back-patting going on in Canada, with a range of commentators and officials remarking how different the system is here and how much more prudent Canadian regulators and standards are than [...]

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The New Taliban

New Breed of Taliban replaces old guard Money and a hatred of foreigners are motivating a new generation of Afghan fighters. Beware: these men may lay down their lives for you if you are their guest. But they may hack your head off if you’re an intruder. They soon demonstrated gruesome beheading videos on their [...]

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Insurgencies in the Movies…

This week I watched with the girlfriend two films about guerrillas, insurgency and wars of occupation: The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Ken Loach’s loosely fictionalized account of a  single Irish community, and a few families, during the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War, from a few years ago, and Meeting Resistance, a [...]

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“We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.”

“Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is. Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential [...]

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Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

“Es hat sich vor meiner Seele wie ein Vorhang weggezogen, und der Schauplatz des unendlichen Lebens verwandelt sich vor mir in den Abgrund des ewig offenen Grabes. Kannst du sagen: Das ist! Da alles voruebergeht? Da alles mit der Wetterschnelle vorueberrollt, so selten die ganze Kraft seines Daseins ausdauert, ach, in den Strom fortgerissen, untergetaucht [...]

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Christopher Alan Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire

When Robert Clive returned to Bengal in 1765, after several year’s absence, he was shocked and discouraged by what he observed in the East India Company’s new possession: an “unwarrantable Acquisition of Riches had introduced Luxury in every shape and in its most pernicious Excess,” so that “every inferior seemed to have grasped at Wealth.” [...]

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John E. Woods, The Aqquyunlu: Clan, Confederacy, Empire

Mongol General: “What is best in life?” Conan: “Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.” This quote has been attributed to Genghis Khan and plenty of other steppe nomads, and that is what we recall of them in popular historical imagination. Driven by bloodthirst and a [...]

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Jorge Luis Borges

“It all began with the suspicion (perhaps exaggerated) that the gods were unable to talk.  Centuries of a feral life of flight had atrophied that part of them which was human; the moon of Islam and the cross of Rome had been implacable with these fugitives.  Beetling brows, yellowed teeth, the sparse beard of a [...]

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Micheal Axworthy, Sword of Persia: Nader Shah, from Tribal Warrior to Tyrant

Some biographical subjects, Hitler, Mao, Stalin, are beyond the pale in terms of sympathy, the task one of excoriation and condemnation. This is a point made by an early nineteenth century historian of Persia, Sir John Malcolm, in describing Jonas Hanway, another historian of Nader whose favoured tone was a haughty combination of contempt, superiority [...]

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