Book 26 - Helen Dunmore "The Greatcoat"

Helen Dunmore "The Greatcoat" (Hammer)





It's early 1950s and newly-married Isabel is settling down to married life with Philip, her doctor husband, in East Yorkshire. There's an abandoned wartime airfield nearby, which reminds her of the one near where she was living with her Aunt during the war and where she got to know the sounds of the Lancaster planes. Her new ground-floor flat is cold and lonely and the landlady living upstairs is constantly walking to and fro. She rummages the cupboards for any extra blankets and finds a RAF greatcoat and starts sleeping with that on top of covers. Then one night there is tapping on the window and an airman outside, and she starts hearing the rumble of the fighter planes.

Read in two sittings, this was an atmospheric ghost story and I really enjoyed reading it

Book 27 - Noam Chomsky "Rogue States"

Noam Chomsky "Rogue States" (Pluto Press)





I started reading this book last year , then put it aside for awhile, but chapter by chapter , I kept on reading it as i knew i was a must read type of book, and hence, is a important chronicle of American political actions around the world. The US talks a lot about human rights, and respecting the rule of law. The reality is very different.

One of the reasons for the US embargo on Cuba for the last 40 years is the fear that the “virus” of taking matters into one’s own hands might stimulate the poor and underprivileged to demand opportunities for a decent living. The new leading recipient of US military aid, Colombia, has the worst human rights record in the western hemisphere at the same time that US military aid and training are scheduled to increase. The US instigated a military coup in Guatemala in 1954, because the government’s agrarian reform program, which would aid peasants against the upper classes, had a strong appeal to its neighbors, where similar conditions prevail. Such a thing could not be allowed to happen (the Cuban “virus”). Contempt for the rule of law is deeply rooted in US practice and intellectual culture. When Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, the UN Security Council ordered an immediate withdrawal. The US secretly increased arms shipments to Indonesia; meantime, UN Ambassador Daniel Moynihan rendered the UN “utterly ineffective in whatever measures they took”, because the State Department wanted things to turn out exactly the way they did.

Chomsky also looks at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Kosovo, labour rights, Nicaragua, NAFTA/GATT/WTO, the international debt crisis, and the way all of these subjects have been reported, or not reported, in the US media.

Chomsky paints a devastating picture of US actions around the world, where the boom is lowered on countries who don’t do things the way the US wants. Highly recommended.