What are you reading now - and then

[Stavros]

The Sunni-Shi'a schism is these days mostly about politics rather than theology, and as Ghattas tries to show the recent revival of the schism has more to do with the politics of the State than the state of a Muslim mind. There is rarely any acknowdgement of the way many individuals in the Middle East, as elsewhere, have turned to religion as solace in times when dictatorship and war have undermined their confidence in their fellow man. In its pure meaning, a Salaf is thus someone who revives a piety for themselves divorced from politics precisely because their religion has been defiled by politics, and is thus something one should consider particularly in the case of brutal dictatorships in Egypt, Syria and Iraq. One finds extremists everywhere, but less of them at the political level in Jordan, the Gulf Emirates and Oman, even Lebanon, where Hezbollah is at core a political rather than a relgious movement.
If you are interested enough in the theology, there is a fine set of essays in The Cambridge Companion to Muhammad (2010) edited by Jonathan E. Brockopp. Be warned, that as with Bible studies, there are some arcane discussions on the meanings of words and how differently they can be translated, particularly in the chapter on the splitting of the Moon.
Set against this intellectual exercise, one occasionally comes across the absurdities of the schisms in Islam, of which the Sunni-Shi'a is only one. A Libyan colleague in a UK university where we were both graduate students complained to me about a Saudi who he had been praying with on campus. After the first sequence of bowing and kneeling, the Lbyan had stood up with his hands by his sides, and was asked 'why do you pray like that?', the Saudi having crossed his arms. 'Did I do something wrong' the Libyan asked, and it went no further, but he was clearly annoyed by the question, as if it questioned his faith. To make matters even more absurd, there is even a debate for those who do cross their arms: should the arms be above or below or on the navel? When it gets to navel gazing, I think we -or they- have lost the plot, and I don't doubt in the 'Islamic State of Iraq and Syra', one such 'mistake' and the miscreant would lose his head...

[Stavros]

John R. Bolton, The Room Where it Happened (Simon & Schuster, 2020).

John Bolton has written a book about a devoted servant of the USA; an efficient, focused head of his Department in Government; an incisive intellectual, a brilliant strategic thinker, indeed, probably a genius. That man is John. R Bolton. Such is the halo of respect that surrounds him, that when he is in an out of the transition team after the 2016 election, the President-elect, Kushner Bannon and Reibus all tell him what a great guy he is, how much they appreciate his advice, that they love what he says and want him on the team in the New Year -but is only offered Deputy of this or that, and puts his failure down to 'not working the room' be it in Manhattan or Mar-a-Lago. Or to put it another way: he was a natural, so why did they acknowledge his skills but not recruit him?

No matter, even Not-in-Office, the new team had listened to him, and acted on his recommendations: Move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem -check. Withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council- check. Withdraw funding from UNRWA- check. Prepare to withdraw from the Paris Climate Change and the Iran Nuclear Agreements -check, and check. Meanwhile, as he observed the Presidency become a bear pit with one senior official coming and then going, it was simple: sit back, and wait, and the call will come: and it did.

No need to crash through the door of the Oval Office and yell 'Here's Johnnnyyy...!!!', just arrive with an agenda that dominates this book: Iran, Iran, and then, Iran. Throw in North Korea, and you have more than half the book, with an amount of tedious detail that suggests he often just wrote up his notes. The strategic vision Bolton has is represented by the quotation from the Duke of Wellington at the threshold of the book-

'Hard poundng, this gentlemen. Let's see who will pound the longest' - replace pound with bomb to update to Bolton's view.
Whether it is military force or sanctions, what Bolton says about sanctions sums up his strategic imperative, saying of them:
'they're about using America's massive economic power to advance our national interests. They are most effective when applied massively, swiftly, and decisively, and enforced with all the power available (p.271).

Had such power been used there would by now have been regime change in Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela (all three discussed in the book), and you might as well throw in Cuba and Nicaragua, though change leading to what and to whom is never considered, and given what happend with regime change in Iraq, that might be the best thing to do.
The reason why such changes did not occur? Because Bolton's advice was undermined by the President -liable to change his mind and policy in an instant, depending on who he has been talking to-; indivduals in the administration -specificially Steven Mnuchin, dismissed as someone constantly referring decisions back to the bureaucrats, a 'Democrat', and on China, a 'Panda hugger'. Mike Pompeo comes across as, at time a loyal comrade, at other times untrustworthy and at the end, the man he claims was (with Mick Mulvaney) the source of the leaks to the Times and Post that the President accused Bolton of.

Then there is Nikki Haley, elevated to do his former non-job at the UN in the machine of 'global governance' Bolton sees as an obstacle and futile restraint on American Power. Claiming her only motivation for taking the job is/was her Presidential ambitions, she never gets a kind word. Indeed, this never made it to the press, presumably because of the shocking language in the account by the President to Bolton of an Oval Office meeting with Rex Tillerson and Haley:

Haley, said Trump, had some disagreement with Tillerson, who responded "Don't ever talk to me that way again". Before Haley could say anything, Tillerson said "You're nothing but a cunt, and don't ever forget it" (p.57).

Hmmm...is that the kind of language Tillerson would use?

Throughout the book, Bolton regards the 45th President de haut en bas, being so much more intelligent than he, and it is clear that in spite of the damage limtation he had to engage in because of tweets and temper tantrums, he does not care about the President's style or its impact on political life in the USA. He joined the Administation to pursue his own agenda, shaped by the belief that Iran poses the most serious and immedate security risk to the USA. As a devotee of Jeanne Kirkpatrck, he does not believe Dictatorships can be reformed, and proposes regime change in Iran, through massive and effective sanctions to all but destroy the economy (as happened with sanctions in 1951-53 though he doesn't mention this example); and if necessary military strikes to incapacitate Iran's nuclear and missile development.
However, in spite of the successes of his earlier recommendations, he failed on Iran, just as he failed to persuade the President and his team that there was nothing to be gained from even meeting Kim Jong-un, and that just meeting the Taliban (referred to by Bolton as 'thugs') would amount to a concession undermining the purpose of the USA's presence in Afghanistan, which Bolton defends as essential for US security, albeit something that can be sustained with fewer boots on the ground. Indeed, the prospect of the Taliban meeting the President at Camp David was a resignation issue, as it was too for Pompeo.

Again and again, Bolton finds that his insistence that the US act decisively, swiftly and with purpose is either ignored, or the President agrees, then changes his mind at the last moment: Iran's attacks on Drones reaches a crisis which Bolton wants to resolve with the bombing of the two or three batteries that launched the missiles: The President agrees, but at the last moment, decides to cancel the operation, one of the first occasions in which Bolton considers resigning. Bolton is thus resigned to the fact that while he is NSA supremo, the President is just as likely to take advice from Jared Kushner, Rudolph Giuliani and even Rand Paul, whom Bolton loathes and detests. Indeed, at one point when discussing the proposal that the President meet the Iranian Foreign Minister Javid Zarif, something Kushner (a 'democrat') approves of, which Rand Paul also wanted, Bolton writes

Secretary of State Paul later persuaded Trump to defer the Zarif sanctions for thirty days. I wonder if he cleared that with Secretary of State Giuliani? (p411).

On one level, this ought to be an insight into the machinery of the Executive Branch of US Government, but is not because the whole of the book is a justification for Bolton's extreme views. In spite of having served so often in Republican administations, he seems unable to appreciate why the US has such a large burueacracy- with more than 70 years of treaties and agreements, it is obvious that a Presidential order must not conflict with existing agreements, which is why Defence has to refer to State and State to Treasury and so on, that 'inter-agency' process that consumes time and alters judgments when Bolton wants action now, today, and without the intervention of a clerk somwhere in Foggy Bottom. That Bolton is also upset and frustrated by the shadow policy makers like Kushner and Giuliani also begs the question -has he never seen Presidents swayed by their friends and associates?

At the end, his account of the Ukraine crisis is poor. He becomes aware only late in the day that Giuliani has been representing unidentified people in the Ukraine -one assumes, people with lots of money- and that he has been inventing stories about Joe and Hunter Biden and the Democrats rather than the Russians interferig in the 2016 election. But he never does further to try and find out who the people are or why Giuliani is doing what he does. He refers to Marie Yovanovich and the attacks on her, but other than claim 90% of the Foreign Service are Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton (does that make them disloyal to the USA?), he makes no judgment of her as an Ambassador, thus fails to defend her reputation, which I think is a shabby way to behave.

And, for all his passion for regime change in Iran, he never reveals his personal activiies on this, which include appearing at rallies organized by the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, for which he has been paid at least $35,000 every time (as is also true of Giuliani). It is a important point because if Bolton wants regime change in Iran, who does he think can form the alternative government to the one it has?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-rudy-giuliani

That he should support the MEK is redolent of the former US support for Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress which was awarded millions of dollars by its mates in Congress, but when Chalabi became part of al-Maliki's first democratically elected government in Iraq, he was instrumental in reneging on the agreement with the Bush Presidency to be inclusive, and sacked every Sunni who had been a state employee, from government bureaucrats to school teachers, pushing many of them into the Saddam Resistance in Anbar Province that became the nucleus of ISIS something Bolton ignores claiming Obama was responsible for the rise of that terrorist orgnization.

Thus Bolton repeatedly attacks Obama and his preference for cautious diplomacy over military force, but fails to offer a coherent alternative to diplomacy other than its most obvious: violence, or sanctions, even when sanctions might not work, as Iran has demonstrated.
One concludes that Bolton has the strategic vision of a video game.

Lastly, the book raises questions about who actually 'owns' foreign policy making in the US, as the President calls the shots, but is provided with ammunition by Defence, State, the NSA and at times the Treasury, personal friends or in the current case, family members; and throughout the book there is no awareness of any working relationship between the Oval Office and Congress, surely the most important relationship a President has?

Thus, at times this is a fascinating book, but at least 100 pages too long. The Chapters on Iran, North Korea and Venezuela are interesting if bloated; the chapters on China and the Ukraine lacking in substance, with no evidende that Bolton knows much about China, surely a major strategic weakness in his armoury? It is something of a slog, and you might be entertained by the numerous examples of the 45th President's foul language, his inability to separate his personal interests from the interests of the USA, his by now legendary even comical ignorance, his very peculiar inability to respect women in power, and his need to humiliate and ridicule people far more intelligent than he, because they are so. Including Bolton, who, accused of leaking to the Press, walks out of the Oval Office for the last time, having had one too many insults from so wretched a man whom he never admired or believed in anyway.

The book written to persuade you John Bolton is a man of principle and a strategic visionary, leaves me feeling that he is an extemist who does not think through his own strategic proposals, and is thus at best useless in office, at worst, damaging to the USA's national interest, however that is defined.

[sukumvit boy]

Thanks for that great review Stavros.

[sukumvit boy]

"The Boundless Sea : A Human History of The Oceans" by David Abulafia
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/01...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
This is a scholarly yet very readable work incorporating the very latest historical,linguistic,archeological and genetic findings to tell this amazing story. The author and editors have obviously taken great care to provide lots of maps with both ancient and modern place names right in the text as the reader encounters them so one doesn't need to go hunting through the book for them and obscure concepts are thoroughly explained for the non specialist as they are encountered in the text. There are also two sections if high quality photographs.
This is such a delight to read and at 1088 pages it's the perfect pandemic page-turner.

[Stavros]

"The Boundless Sea : A Human History of The Oceans" by David Abulafia
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/01...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
This is a scholarly yet very readable work incorporating the very latest historical,linguistic,archeological and genetic findings to tell this amazing story. The author and editors have obviously taken great care to provide lots of maps with both ancient and modern place names right in the text as the reader encounters them so one doesn't need to go hunting through the book for them and obscure concepts are thoroughly explained for the non specialist as they are encountered in the text. There are also two sections if high quality photographs.
This is such a delight to read and at 1088 pages it's the perfect pandemic page-turner.

If you haven't seen the link below, I hope you find the interview with Abulafia interesting, he makes some valid points on the Annales group, and inevitably his work on the Mediterranean is compared -favourably- with the classic study by Braudel. I hope to set time aside for the latest work you recommend, but not right now as I am behind on at least 5 books and some other work.

http://cjh.uchicago.edu/issues/fall16/7.5.pdf

[Stavros]

Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man (Simon & Schuster, 2020).

This mercifully short book is about money and love: an abundance of money, an absence of love, with the implication that the two would compliment each other had the absence of love not, as she believes, destroyed her father.

In 1909 Sigmund Freud wrote an essay 'The Family Romances' in which he explored the dynamics of family life and the provision of, or withholding of love, and the consequences this has for family members. Though she has a PhD in Psychology, Trump does not refer to the Freud paper, yet the spine of her book is held up by what she sees as the destructive relationship Fred Trump had with hs eldest son Freddy, a dynamic shaped by Freddy's inability to earn the respect of his father, given that Fred was not and never did show any love to any of his children or their chlidren, regarding emotional expressions as weakness, when weakness is a cardinal sin. Indeed, because when criticised Freddy even said 'sorry' or admitted failing at somethig, he was diminished in his father's eyes. And if Fred withdrew any expression of love, Mother Mary, terrified of her husband, cowed in silence, matching Fred's emotional cruelty with her own indifference to her son's needs.

Such is the level of accusation in this book, in which her Uncle learns through the torment of Freddy how to please Fred -maximising his father's cruelty to his own advantage- one wonders how she manages to control herself, until the book's last pages when she does rather lose control (see below).

The money is thus fundamental to this Family Romance, more so than sex (from the Freudian perspective) which has no reference in the story other than a lewd remark Uncle makes about his teenage niece's 'rack' when seeing her in a swimsuit. She argues that most of Fred's business success was based on apartment complexes he owned in Brooklyn which over time netted Fred a fortune close to $1 billion, even as he (and later his second son) lied about the extent and worth of the portfolio, primarily to cheat the Inland Revenue of the taxes the Trump family ought to have paid -(when Fred was dying, Mary was told the estate was worth around $20m). Just as crucial, Fred rarely used his own money to build complexes, but took advantage of the Loans available from Federal or State sources, often interest free. And, once built, all Fred needed to do was sit back and collect the rent. Ultimately, one comes to the conclusion that Fred, and his blessed, second son, for most of their lives (up to 2017) were not property developers, just landlords.

The money flows through this Family Romance in weird and wonderful ways -for all the accusations she makes about Fred, it was he who ensured she never went short, even when her mother divorced the First Born and was fobbed off with $600 a month alimony. At one point Fred found an apartment in Brooklyn at a modest rent, though Mary did not know through a trust fund her family owned 15% of the building. Fred, a teetotaller and workaholic, was genuinely cruel. When a tenant complained in winter that the dilipadated apartment was freezing cold because of worn-out windows, he appeared in person, took of his coat and jacket, rolled up his sleevs and declared the place was as hot as an oven. His obsession with spending meant he frequently hid his wife's cheque book, and seems not once to have renovated his company offices on Avenue Z in south Brooklyn -where he spent most of his life, rarely leaving New York City, and never the USA. That said, as she notes with pride, compared to her Uncle, Fred was never a cent in debt.

There are moments of astonishing cruelty in this book, mostly as the First Born failure consoles himself with the booze that killed him, and as he lays dying in an attic in 'the House' in Queens is ignored by Mother Mary and siblings, indeed, on the day he died, aone in hospital, Uncle went to the movies. When it came to the question of Fred's legacy, the attempt to shut out Freddy's family from their right is gruesome, but when Mary and her mother take the rest of the family to court to contest Fred's will, Mother Mary is simply savage to Little Mary -who regularly visited her in 'the House'- (one wonders why) telling her over the phone-

" "Do you know what your father was worth when he died", she said. "A whole lot of nothing" "(page 172).

In the official obituary of Mary Trump, posted at her funeral, her eldest born son was not mentioned.

Throughout this peculiar Family Romance, the other siblings come and go, mostly indifferent to their elder brother, knowing that to shower him with love would displease Fred; while Uncle is depicted as a vain man who in reality stopped developing at the age of three, who has survived by managing to accrue enough debt to be dependent on others and make them dependent on him, as someone once said, 'if you owe the bank a million dollars, you have a problem. If you owe the bank a billion dollars, the bank has a problem'.
There is the casual reference to Fred growing up speaking German so that English was his second language, and that during the 1972 court case accusing Fred of discriminating against Black people, refusing to rent them homes, he referred to them as die Schwarze. There is the simple fact that Fred had to deal with the Mafia when securing bulding contracts, as has been acknowledged by Uncle too. There is the peculiar detali that in his poorly lit office in Avenue Z, Fred had a row of wooden carvings of Indian Chiefs; and that in the 'Library' in 'The House' on Midland Parkway in Queens, there were no books, only family photographs.

But at the end Mary's deep resentment at the way in which Fred and her Uncle constantly belittled, humiliated and ultimately neglected her father cannot contain her rage and resentment. Thus, at the end of the book when discussing her Uncle's performance as President in the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic, she states that-

"Thankfully [he[ doesn't have many supporters in New York City, but even some of those will die because of his craven need fpr "revenge". What Donald thinks is justified in retaliation [against Cuomo] is, in this context, mass murder" (p, two hundred and eight).

But were he asked to respond to that, I guess her Uncle would just shrug his shoulders and mutter 'I don't care'. Just like his father.

[sukumvit boy]

Oh my,what a book. I see it's breaking records for prepublication and first day sales . I hope to find a cheap used copy in a few weeks.
Just as interesting I think is the subject of sociopathy along the whole spectrum from mild antisocial behaviour to narcissistic and histrionic personalities to raving murderous psychopaths .
It has been estimated that 1% to 3% of the population are sociopaths so most of us have or had friends and family members who are sociopaths . You are lucky if you managed to escape serious emotional or other damage from these relationships because most go unrecognized .
https://www.amazon.com/Conquering-So...s%2C209&sr=1-5

[Cereal Escapist]

A few years ago (perhaps 5) in the summer, I read The Long Halloween.

As the new Matt Reeves' Batman movie with Robert Pattinson is supposedly loosely based on this, I decided to give it a re-read over the last few days.

Let me first say that I have never held any comic in high regard as literature and know that 1) as a visual medium, much of the enjoyment comes from the art as much as it does the story and 2) comic writers are trained to be episodic and drag stuff out in that they are not really trying to tell a very tight story but....

I really don't understand why this title is held in high regard. Batman is not very bright and quite a bit of a bystander in the entire story. Plus, the constant barrage of the rogue's gallery that is oft praised just seems like fan service. I recalled not really enjoying it years ago but on re-read, it is truly a poor story and I really hope Reeves' changes improve on the central narrative.

[Stavros]

Oh my,what a book. I see it's breaking records for prepublication and first day sales . I hope to find a cheap used copy in a few weeks.
Just as interesting I think is the subject of sociopathy along the whole spectrum from mild antisocial behaviour to narcissistic and histrionic personalities to raving murderous psychopaths .
It has been estimated that 1% to 3% of the population are sociopaths so most of us have or had friends and family members who are sociopaths . You are lucky if you managed to escape serious emotional or other damage from these relationships because most go unrecognized .

A few more points:
1) Should even a professional Psychologist make assessments of people they have not interviewed in a clinical setting? Everythng Mary writes about is from personal memory, yet I know from talking with my sisters that we remember the same family event differently. She has an agenda, to defend her Father's life and memory from his brothers and sisters, who treated him like a nobody for most of his life.

2) There are the kind of petty slights that can linger like a bad smell that won't go away for years. Her Aunts and Uncles from the time she was small, greeted her with "Hi, honeybunch", and a kiss on the cheek, but she realizes after a time, it is not a show of affection, they have so studiously shut Freddy and his family out of their lives, they can't actually remember what her name is.

When the surviving family members congregate in the White House in 2017 to celebrate an Aunt's birthday, Jared Kushner walks in to dinner, late, kisses his wife, has a quiet word with the President, then leaves without even looking at anyone else in the room. At the same event, as they pass the President's bedroom, he offers the judgement the private residence has never looked so good since Washington lived there-!

3) Again, it is the phenomenal hold that Fred exerted over the family that Mary rams home time and again. When Fred realized that Freddy had no real interest in business, that he lacked the 'killer' instinct (which Mary's Uncle had, and has, in spades), he became redundant. Moreover, it is the fact that when Freddy did discover something he was good at and enjoyed -being a pilot- far from receiving his father's support, it became a matter of ridicule, just as Freddy was probably at his happiest with his wife and childrei in Montauk.
To Fred and his Mary's Uncle, the place I associate with Melville, and figures fondly in Whitman's Leaves of Grass, was nowhere, just a rock by the sea, but just as Freddy had to be in 'the House' or at least in Queens, so it appears that Fred had absolutely no interest or curiosity in the United States as a country, and expected the rest of the family to focus on Work-House-Work, other than Mother Mary's charitable work in Queens and Long Island, in which Fred actually showed no interest at all.
I just wonder what kind of person lives in the US and shows no interest in it, and probably regards a visit to the Grand Canyon as an expensive way to look at some more rocks. Fred and Mary honeymooned in Cuba, and Fred once had a building project in Virginia, other than those cases, he spent his entire life in NYC.

Again consider what happened when Fred's daughter Maryanne told her father her (first) husband David, who had a drink problem like Freddy, would love to work for the family firm. Fred agreed, "and gave his son-in-law a job as a parking lot attendant at one of his buildngs in Jamaica Estates" p83 (in Queens).

Psychpathology must have something to do with it, that stunning ability to literally care nothing for the feelings of others, indeed, to see them as a weakness to be ridiculed, or exploited. But I wonder too if the abstract nature of money, when it is in abundance in a family, and Mary cannot complain as she never went without (though Fred refused to give her money for a replacement tyewriter when her student digs at Columbia were burgled -Mother Mary gave her the money) -I wonder if the abstract nature of money enables the abstraction of human feeling. Or maybe the fear of losing it generates the ferocity the rich person feels they need to protect it by all means necessary?
Or, there is the fate of the dwarf, Alberich, in the Nibelunglenlied and notably in the first scene of Wagner's Das Rheingold -having been rejected by the Rhinemaidens, who innocently tell him of the Gold on the bed of the Rhine and its magical powers, that can only be used by a man who renounces love, Alberich does just that. And when Wotan takes away the Ring of power Alberich has made from the Gold, Alberich curses anyone who wears it.

Mary doesn't say money has been the curse on her family, but it often appears to be so, for like a Netflix soap opera, this Family Romance has all the ingredients of a tv drama- definitely not a comedy.

[sukumvit boy]

If you haven't seen the link below, I hope you find the interview with Abulafia interesting, he makes some valid points on the Annales group, and inevitably his work on the Mediterranean is compared -favourably- with the classic study by Braudel. I hope to set time aside for the latest work you recommend, but not right now as I am behind on at least 5 books and some other work.

http://cjh.uchicago.edu/issues/fall16/7.5.pdf

Greetings Stavros,just a belated thank you for the interesting interview with David Abulafia. Additionally ,I found the information about Fernand Braudel and the French Annales school even more interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernand_Braudel