kingsoupnut

'Liberals imagine that jihadists and islamists are acting as anyone else would given a similar history of unhappy encounters with the West. And they totally discount the role that religious beliefs play in inspiring a group like the Islamic State - to the point where it would be impossible for a jihadist to prove he was doing anything for religious reasons. Apparently it's not enough for an educated person with economic opportunities to devote himself to the most extreme and austere version of Islam, to articulate his religious reasons for doing so ad nauseam, and even to go as far as to confess his certainty about martyrdom on video before blowing himself up in a crowd. Such demonstrations of religious fanaticism are somehow considered rhetorically insufficient to prove that he really believed what he said he believed.' - Sam Harris page 47-48

I think that one paragraph sums up my frustrations with the debate on Islamic terrorism. Imagine if you went back in time to see the Knights Templar not give an inch in battle, driven by their religiously inspired, fervent belief in martyrdom. The conclusion you draw from this is that this was at root a frustration garnered from hundreds of years of eastern foreign policy in the form of Jihad and the knights' reaction has nothing to do with religion. Surely you'd have to be at least dishonest in that scenario to discount the role of religious conviction? And yet as Harris demonstrates, this has almost become a mainstream political opinion amongst so called liberals. Harris continues -

'The belief that a life of eternal pleasure awaits martyrs after death explains why certain people can honestly chant "we love death more than the infidels love life." They truly believe in martyrdom - as evidenced by the fact that they regularly sacrifice their lives, or watch their children do so, without a qualm. As we have been having this conversation there was an especially horrific attack on a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, where members of the Taliban murdered 145 people, 132 of them children. Here's an except from an online conversation with a Taliban supporter in the aftermath of the massacre - Human life only has value among you worldly materialist thinkers. Death is not the end of life. It is the beginning of existence in a world much more beautiful than this. Paradise is for those pure of hearts. All children have pure hearts. They have not sinned yet... They have not been corrupted by their kafir parents. We did not end their lives. We gave them new ones in paradise, where they will be loved more than you can imagine. They will be rewarded for their martyrdom."

I think that speaks for itself. You would have to make the claim that the Taliban supporter is lying, in order to undermine the idea that extreme religious conviction plays some part in the terror debate and I personally think the weight of evidence rests against you if you do.

But anyway that's not even the debate that people should be having, the debate should be how do you deal with the tide of Islamist and jihadi groups around the globe? Maajid Nawaz argues that Islamism, the political belief of fundamentalism and the spreading of Islamic law and customs across all nations, must be defeated at grass roots levels within the Muslim community. They estimate that Islamist groups make up between 15 and 25% of the world's 1.6 billion strong Muslim population. He sees The Obama administrations refusal to name Islamism as being at the root of groups like IS as a failure. He believes that naming the problem instead of avoiding it, gives Muslims a choice to either 'reclaim our religion and its narrative, or allow thugs and demagogues to speak in its name and impose it on others. Calling it extremism is too relative and vague and sidesteps the responsibility to counter its scriptural justification.' He means scriptural justification here in the sense that one may interpret many things from the Qu'ran and ahadith and one of those readings is the skewed beliefs of Islamic State. He also mentions however that another essential thing that needs to happen is for there to be an acknowledgement that there are many different interpretations possible, each to the person who reads the scripture. Essentially if the Muslim community can get to the stage where the interpretations are personal to the person and there is no right answer, this is the first step on the way to pluralism and secularism. 

I've done rather a hatchet job here of what is a short, at 128 pages, yet valuable conversation in which the intricacies and problems of the debate are analysed in such greater depth. Despite its small length, it is definitely a worthy addition to the field and a good discussion between two respectful men, one a liberal Muslim, the other a liberal atheist. The more this is talked about and the less it is approached with apprehension and shame the better for our society. 

Hey guys, I'm on wordpress now with reviews and probably political posts, but I figured if any of you are on there you can follow me if you like as a back up. I don't know about any of you, but I don't trust Booklikes sometimes!

https://kingsoupnut.wordpress.com/

'The stock exchange will be pulled down, the horse plough will give way to the tractor, the country houses will be turned into children's holiday camps, the Eton and Harrow match will be forgotten, but England will still be England, an everlasting animal stretching into the future and the past, and, like all living things, having the power to change out of all recognition and yet remain the same.'

This history ends with the above quote from George Orwell, after 794 pages of fantastically written social and political history. The main premise of Sandbrook's volume is that despite the 1960s being billed as an age of social and cultural revolution, much of British society, its values and behaviours remained consistent with previous decades. He argues that the counter culture of the late 60s was a small milieu of upper-middle class youths that, for the most part, were able to rebel because they had a financial safety net to fall back on and a path back into regular society. The introduction of the birth control pill that, it has been claimed, brought on the sexual revolution and the age of free love is often highly overstated. Sandbrook argues that British sexual practices remained largely conservative and the majority sought monogamy.

Now Sandbrook it would seem, is a conservative and the argument can be made that he went into this work with a preconceived notion of what he wanted to find about the 60s and wrote his book around that. I'm sure there is an element of truth to that, nevertheless I felt that for the most part he was fair with, for example, the Labour party and Harold Wilson's government. He was sympathetic to the economic position the previous Conservative government had left behind and the challenges that Wilson's government then faced. Even though the over riding conclusions were ones that promoted a political narrative, I'm not so sure it's a false one.

I could tell after around a hundred and fifty pages that the author is passionate about modern British history, his writing was engaged, witty and in depth. There are a lot of gems. One of the things I took away that I hadn't known, was that the Labour party managed to get the bill outlawing the death penalty passed against the tide of popular opinion. In 1964 popular support for abolishing hanging sat at just 23 percent, yet the abolition passed through parliament at votes of 343 to 185. The 60s was also the decade that abortion, homosexuality and suicide were decriminalised and in that sense it represented tangible, progressive change in law in the UK. Sandbrook argues that this was a culmination of decades of campaigning rather than a sudden break in traditions coming from youth culture and I suspect here he is correct. 

The political commentary was broken up with chapters on the formation and success of acts like The Beatles. I'll admit, perhaps controversially, that I'm not particularly a fan of The Beatles. Despite this I thoroughly enjoyed Sandbrook's version of their story. He seemed to wish to exonerate McCartney, who in his view, is often billed as the less talented song writer when put up against Lennon. One draw back of the sections on the band is that Sandbrook often portrays the darker sides of Lennon's character and again, this may be in part down to politics and the idea that Lennon is often seen as the hippy in the band and the one who was most in tune with the counter cultural excesses of the late 60s. However this in my opinion doesn't take away from highly informative, interesting chapters.

If you can accept the possible political overtones of the author what lies beneath is a riveting history of Britain in the 60s, an accomplished body of work and one that I highly recommend to anyone with an interest in history.  

Bought this trio. Looking to be more active on booklikes in 2017 just been busy. Hope you are all well and enjoying reading. 

I have a great deal of respect for Douglas Murray. He is a confident and passionate speaker. The positions that he takes are often, shall we say, unpopular. Yet this does not deter him from putting forward his arguments. There are probably many areas where I would disagree with him, but I think it's important to get a range of opinions from across the political spectrum in pursuance of growth and learning, so I picked up his book on a controversial topic.

Neoconservatism is one of those blanket political terms most often associated with those that believe the Iraq War was the correct thing to do and that the correct path for American foreign policy is to pursue the spreading of liberty and democracy to as many nations as possible in order to protect freedom in the US. It is in some ways a product of the Cold War and the idea of the need to shield the free world from the advances of the Soviet Union and its totalitarian nature.

Other than a few core beliefs there doesn't seem to be much in the way of commonality between the people branded neocons. Murray attempts to underpin the roots of the concept and then document how it developed. He believes that it is often misunderstood or misrepresented in mainstream politics. The term has become, as a consequence of the highly-charged nature of the Iraq war, a vague, derogatory word to label those that defended the war and it is perhaps not surprising in 2016, given that in mainstream media and political opinion the war is roundly regarded as a catastrophe. 

Snippets of the book are useful for understanding what neocons roughly believe in, however the scope of that task proves too much for Murray in a mere 223 pages. For such a short book there are too many sections that just don't deliver the punches that I have come to expect from a man of Murray's intellect. When he does get some momentum going it ends up short lived because he moves onto another area and in the end a book that wishes to convince the reader of the need for this philosophy ends up a little bit thin on the ground. I can't help but feel unsatisfied. 

So my two friends and I did a 2 hour long podcast on US-Russian relations, Corbyn, Immigration in Europe, Islam & Merkel's proposed Burqa ban, the faithless electors in the US electoral college and a load of other things :D

Please give it a listen, we approach some serious topics and we take it seriously, but I don't think any of us profess to be experts, we had a productive discussion with some laughs involved.

Enjoy and any feedback is welcome.

Enjoy your weekends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xTZ2CNzmYk&feature=share

'Most People,' Sageman says, 'think that terrorism comes from poverty, broken families, ignorance, immaturity, lack of family or occupational responsibilities, weak minds susceptible to brainwashing - the sociopath, the criminal, the religious fanatic.' In fact terrorists are among the 'best and brightest', from 'caring, middle class families', who usually came to the West to study, and 'who can speak four, five, six languages'. According to Sageman, 'Al-Qaeda's members are no the Palestinian fourteen year olds we see on the news, but join the jihad at the average age of 26. Three quarters are professionals or semi-professionals. They are engineers, architects and civil engineers, mostly scientists.' Few had grown up religious or had been to a religious school. 'At the time they joined the Jihad, the terrorists were not very religious. They only became religious once they joined the Jihad. - Pg 23

Terrorism, as a subject, is something that I've been obsessing over now for about 6 months - 1 year. I started with Sam Harris on a Joe Rogan podcast and went from there. I think what drew me in is the consensus amongst the public. That theology has nothing to do with this debate and it is primarily politics and grievances with western foreign policy that drive radicalisation. Criticism of Islam as an idea/belief system and intolerance of Muslims as a group of people have blurred together almost in the public eye to fall under the umbrella term Islamophobia. Here was Sam Harris just utterly speaking his mind on the topic so fearlessly in an atmosphere of judgement and shame if you don't tow along to the majority narrative, saying that religion is a bigger piece of the pie than most think. It's compelling when you crave discourse and alternative opinions. Here I am now reading Kenan Malik's so far enjoyable insights into the legacy of the reaction to Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. I picked the quote above because it comes from an adviser to the US government Marc Sageman who worked closely for a time with the Mujahideen.

It’s interesting because one of the big commentators on this subject is Noam Chomsky and I’ve heard him in the past espouse the idea that one of the roots of young men becoming radicalised is their frustrations and sense of hopelessness at a lack of opportunities. I think Sageman’s quote refutes this and I have to say that although I value Chomsky’s stance on US foreign policy I think he has a tendency to paint radicals as marginalised men when they probably aren’t in the scale he presents in many cases.

Weirdly right now I’m switching between The Fellowship of the Rings and from Fatwa to Jihad. Just keeping things interesting.

So finally getting around to reading the LOTR series. I've also booked tickets to go and see all extended editions back to back at the cinema in London in a week. 12 and a half hours in total. I hope I have the stamina to make it through, it's been interesting as someone who was a huge fan of the films to finally read the books and see the similarities/differences. I expected it to be wildly different, but I thought as far as book to film usually goes, Jackson and co stayed quite true to the books with slight alterations here and there. I'd wager it's probably to enhance the drama as the ideas moved to screen.

But anyway, back to the books. My favourite section of the whole book is the council of Elrond. I am for better or worse a political animal and I think the discussions over the ring and strategy most likely engaged that part of me. I thought it was the most tastefully written section of dramatic consequence in the book. The back and forth between Aragorn and Boromir and the stern nature of Elrond blend quite nicely to make the dialogue riveting. 

The lore in particular is important. That is what the films struggled with at times, I never felt that the rings of power and their significance was properly fleshed out, although I'm aware the beginning sequence of the fellowship is dedicated to the rings of power and their story. With the books you see Celebrimbor brought into the fold, albeit briefly, as the forger of the Elven rings which he deceived Sauron with, thus hiding them from the rings pull and protecting the Elven elites from becoming wraiths like the kings of men. Then there is this interesting section I think in Lothlorien with Galadriel where she explains that if the one ring is destroyed, the power of the Elven rings will either be freed or wilt with the one ring. Should it be the latter the Elves culture will regress and so they must leave middle earth. It may have been Elrond thinking about it who details this properly, but I'm sure the lady of the wood has her piece on it.

This all goes some way to explaining why the powerful, elegant race of Elves who seem so wise and able are in fact declining and not in a better position to help the others defend middle Earth from the shadow.

One of the other things I noticed in the fellowship was the observations on human character portrayed through the different races. When the company is being led to Lothlorien by the Elves and they insist on blindfolding Gimli because he's a dwarf, at a time when there is an evil lord with the upper hand seeking dominion over all peoples creeping closer to all places of goodness. I just thought that was typical of the short sighted, tribal instincts that we tend to see in our own characters. People willing to forsake the easy, rational choice and the greater good for their own pride and political point scoring. Relishing in petty squabbling and stubborn, blatantly biased view points. 

It's a good lesson on the dangers of division of good people in the face of encroaching danger and the folly of allowing petty, selfish grievances to get in the way of bonds. Further to this never admitting fault or blame, only seeking to look outwards when something goes wrong and point the finger and the division and resentment this causes. All based in a lack of wisdom, reason, empathy and humility.

I think the great strength of this book is its recurring theme. This idea that no matter how bleak things look and how marginalised the purity of the world is there are always things to cling to that can help change the tide. There is always hope no matter how unbelievable the odds seem to be. It doesn’t matter if you’re a minuscule hobbit constantly overlooked and underestimated. There are strengths that aren’t always considered or apparent that can tip the scales in a big way.

This also then leads on to the touching of philosophy and how Tolkien sort of alludes several times to the idea that very slight variations of action or chance would throw the entire fate of middle earth one way. Gandalf says that Frodo was meant to have the ring and that bodes well for the fate of middle earth, suggesting there's a pulling of the strings behind the scenes, but then there are times when it is suggested that if the person's character does not stand up to the test and they do not act the appropriate way to a challenge that will change the outcome of the war between good and evil. There are some spiritual ideas in play. I think as well this is what attracts me to LOTR ahead of A song of Ice and Fire. I find Martin's analysis of humanity to just be profoundly depressing and cynical and I have enough cynicism about the real world to want my fantasy escapism to be filled with the same. 

I have thoroughly enjoyed the fellowship and I look forward to the two towers. Enjoy your weekend my tragically estranged (because I barely use BL anymore like a fool) BL companions.

Well having a week off has allowed me the time I wouldn't usually have to get through this one. I enjoyed it, it was in parts profound. I enjoyed the focus on the artistic, technological and cultural losses humanity would take in the event of population wipe-out. I think Cormac McCarthy's The Road touches on something similar in parts a bit more subtly. This one is slightly guilty in my opinion of hammering the point home a bit too much at times, but it's for the most part done well.

The structure is slightly odd, in that it zips from the current time to the future after a killer flu has wiped out 99 percent of the population and then back to people's memories before the outbreak. There are often sections of a character's experiences played out at different points along their life and to pull it all together into some form of a cohesive structure takes a lot of patience and skill. I think that's what I liked about Mandel's novel, it was calmly done, well-paced and pretty feasible for the most part. An issue I have with fantasy sometimes is it is easy for an author to over reach and sometimes it leads an otherwise good story down a silly path to the point where it’s tough to take it seriously any more. I think if you wish to be a fantasy writer you must master the ability to make people believe that the world you have fashioned is the world that they themselves live, take it a touch too far and it’s easy to extinguish the plausibility.

The other thing that can happen is the story just begins to unravel and lose where its heading to under the weight of the ambition of the world build. I think this happened with GOT (sorry if you love those books/show). Again mostly I think Mandel gets the balance right with this one, there are ideas, particularly with the character of the prophet and his twisted theological cult that could have been fleshed out further. His character is ultimately weak and one dimensional. Additionally, Jeevan Choudhary, who we think will be the main protagonist at the start of the book, just kind of fizzles out as the book progresses. His story line seems full of promise and then he kind of gets written out as though the author doesn't really know what to do with him once he has served his purpose. 

But then conversely some of the characters like Clarke, Arthur, Miranda and Kirsten are deep and promising. I loved the air terminal as a setting towards the latter stages and liked the idea of a travelling symphony playing music and acting out old plays in an abandoned wilderness. I was fairly engrossed for most of it, with only a few sections here or there that I almost drifted through.

One of its strengths for me was that I found a lot of what Mandel was trying to say about the world and the people in it resonated with my own opinions and experiences. I kind of feel like elements of what are in there would probably come out in a similar way If I was to write a novel and I think feeling some sort of connection with the author on this level always helps. 

Not to mention that it is different and welcomed in an oft-times (sorry probably all the mention of Shakespeare in this one creeping in) hackneyed genre. I will have to see if any of the premises of her other works appeal to me, because she has a lot of potential in my opinion.  

Picked this up to take a break from the heaviness of the Enlightenment book that I was reading and have enjoyed it enough to plough through 155 pages in a day or two. 

What can I say, I'm a sucker for apocalyptic novels. 

It's a weird structure as well, I'll probably write about that more If I write a review for it, but the first book to have won a ACC award that I'll have read. That's probably a bit criminal.

The Fun never ends... Straight on from Stalin into a book that looks to resuscitate the ideals of the enlightenment and disassociate it from colonialism and the charges of 'western cultural imperialism' laid at its door by the likes of Ayatollah Khomeini.

How can you not love it :)

Have great weekends BLers

Montefiore's history of Jerusalem happened to be the first book I reviewed on Booklikes and I was happy to revisit the author with another one of his works. It seems that every time I pick up a history book in a book shop it is endorsed by Montefiore, he's clearly very passionate in his pursuit of historical knowledge. 

This book centres around Stalin and his changing inner circle. It's an odd blend of details of dinner functions, Stalin's character in calm times and the chronicles of the terror and his political brutality. It's a fascinating glimpse into the sycophantic fervour he fostered amongst his magnates and the cunning, horrific nature of his paranoid mind. I've given it five stars, because probably fittingly, after Kershaw's Hitler this is simply the best biography of a historical leader that I have read. 

Anyone who harbours any romanticism or flirts with the hard left I advise to read this and recognise the dangers of unswerving idealism, the dangers of being an illiberal bent on realising a utopia for humanity in the future at any cost to the people of this life. I had always thought that Stalin wasn't overly ideologically motivated, yet this book seeks to dispel that notion comparing the avidity of Stalin's belief in Marxism to that displayed in radical Islamists. 

Something touched upon in the book and spoken about in debates by Christopher Hitchens is the idea that the Tsar in Romanov times was the voice of God himself, understand that and you may be able to understand the cult of personality that Stalin was able to engineer and take advantage of. The idea of a strong, powerful leader was ingrained into Russian society and it is an interesting feature of the revolution, that despite its attempts to turn society on its head with the ultimate goal of Communism, the aura of leadership remained steadfast. 

It fascinated me that the sons and daughters of some of those murdered and tortured beyond repair on Stalin's orders still regarded him as a great leader. It is unfathomable to me that it is possible to inspire such unswerving loyalty amongst people. This is ultimately what draws me to these immensely flawed and yet ridiculously charismatic characters. There seems to be men and women who pop up from time to time under varying banners of ideology, be it religious/political who manage to cultivate vast followings and impact the course of human history through their actions.

And so I came to the end of the book having lived within the court of the red tsar through the eyes of his vicious inner circle and I was struck again by the surreal nature of it all. How terrifying is it? If you place enough power into the hands of the wrong person you can end up with a society in which an innocuous comment could result in years of torture and imprisonment or a painful death. How is it that a man so well read and intelligent as Stalin, uses that intelligence to create a cut throat, savage society in which even those closest to him are not safe from assassination? 

I guess my curiosity will never be sated.

Yeah so I'm like... Yeah I'll definitely read more books this year... and then I only buy these huge historical tomes.

Despite studying modern history for years, in particular, the Soviet Union, it still amazes me that the Red Army took such heavy losses to the Wehrmacht and they still couldn't finish the job.

Millions of dead soldiers, thousands of tanks and aircraft destroyed, underpinned by amateur generals in Stalin's inner circle, some who as late as 1940 were still expounding the strengths of the horse over the tank, seen as a flash in the pan. 

It makes me wonder if the Wehrmacht would have gotten as far as they did if Stalin hadn't ignored the overwhelming intelligence that Hitler was planning to invade and mobilised his army sooner. If he hadn't purged his upper echelon of the more forward thinking, sensible generals and replaced them with amateurs. 

When i read this stuff I always struggle to come to terms with the savagery of the Nazis & Soviets. It seems surreal to think that this was only 80 or so years ago. The scale of the destruction of WW2 and the disregard for human life. It's a struggle to put into words, but at times I feel like the world of the 1930s/40s is like a society on a distant planet rather than our own. 

The age of extremes as Hobsbawm put it.

Believe it or not 234 pages in a week for me is good going for a history book.

Enough in it so far to keep me interested, not at all what I expected. 

Also my podcast equipment has arrived so I may just be able to get my podcast up and running today. Not that I've mentioned it before on here, that's a bit of a curveball. :D

It's one of those where we get sold the whole.. 'Russia was a peasant backwater that had stagnated under the Tsars before Stalin launched the brutal equivalent of an industrial revolution in the five year plans that pulled the Soviet Union into modernity at huge cost to lives.' 

And yet you look at some of the literature and wider culture coming out of Russia in the late 19th Century and you realise that the above viewpoint is a bit caricatured. There seems to have been this great bubble of intellect and philosophy in which the circumstances were just right in that society to produce your Tolstoy's and your Dostoevskys. I'm not saying it was devoid of social and political issues, but for there to have been thriving intellect of this kind there must have been avenues in society that could make it happen.

That's just a wider observation as a lead into my review. The book is fantastic, I envy the ability of Dostoevsky to make characters so unique and believable. When you read a sentence you have your own little voice and identity in your head for that person, and it is a person, because it feels real, it feels like this is a biography rather than fiction. I'd even go as far as to say I've never seen character development on a scale like this. I think the underlying cause of this is the author's ability to create dynamic conversations between characters driven by very different personalities and ideologies.

The three brothers are perfect:

Ivan the arrogant, intellectual atheist, who commands the respect of his brothers and is conflicted between his philosophy and the outcomes of his actions.

Dmitri passionate and emotional doomed to act on emotion, unable to control his fiery infatuation for Grushenka. His actions are always detrimental to himself and yet he never learns.

Alyosha the abnormally empathetic, kind and wizened monk. Constantly embroiled in other people's drama never of his own making and yet patient enough to sit and be a bulwark to anyone who needs him to listen and aid.

And as if great characters and an engrossing, tragic story line isn't enough. We're then hit with a barrage of cutting philosophy, often in great detail to get you thinking when you put the book down. I did think Dostoevsky was an atheist, such was the depth of the argument his character Ivan puts forward in a religious debate with Alyosha, but I later found out that his religious beliefs were always a point for contention and although he was supposedly a Russian orthodox Christian, he possibly identified as deist at one point and was often conflicted.

It's because of this that I think Ivan, Dmitri and Alyosha are all born from he and his own struggles with the big question. They do say write what you know. The book as a whole is a glimpse into the Russian landscape before the brutalities of the First World War, the Civil War and the Soviet regime. It's truly priceless and I will most definitely read his other works later on down the line.