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Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

Started by Thurnez Isa, December 03, 2006, 04:11:35 PM

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Cain

I don't know for sure, but having a quick look at their interests, it wouldn't surprise me.  He's also in deep with the European Nouvelle Droit, as you might expect.  Russia, for all its crowing about its anti-fascist history, has one of the largest, most violent and well connected Neo-Nazi undergrounds in the world, and most of their fellow travellers in western Europe look to them for guidance.

EK WAFFLR

A few of the Russian neo nazis visited Norway last year and performed random acts if violence, and were promptly sent back.

Dugin is also popular among the neo-masculinity people/Jack Donovan groupies. As is Putin, of course.
"At first I lifted weights.  But then I asked myself, 'why not people?'  Now everyone runs for the fjord when they see me."


Horribly Oscillating Assbasket of Deliciousness
[/b]

Cain

I think Roger would really enjoy the book I've been reading recently.

If you have the time, I strongly recommend Andrew Feinstein's The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade.  If Smedley Butler made the moral case against the arms trade, Feinstein provides the legal one.  Even better, Feinstein also speaks from personal experience - he was formerly an MP in South Africa, working as an economic advisor and anti-corruption official in government, and was one of the most vocal voices in pressing for an investigation into the supremely corrupt South African Arms Deal scandal.

His book deals with his own experience in an almost incidental way, though, which is good.  Because that scandal was just a drop in the ocean when it comes to the corruption of the arms trade, as Feinstein makes abundantly clear.

I'm only about 2/3rds of the way through the book, but there seems to be three main strands thus far.

The first is BAE.  Obviously with BAE, the big one is Al-Yamanah, the massive and ongoing arms deal to Saudi Arabia, marked by so much corruption that when the UK Serious Fraud Office attempted to investigate it, the Saudi government threatened to cut all diplomatic and political ties with the UK, specifically and disturbingly emphasizing counter-terrorism intelligence, in retaliation (yes, Prince Bandar made the threat, and yes, Prince Bandar was the point man for the deal).  Feinstein also has a very worthwhile digression into the life of Prince Bandar and the influence of Saudi lobbying on American arms sales in the 1970s and 80s.

BAE's corruption in the Czech Republic, Hungary and their whole financial structure also get a good look in.  BAE doesn't merely facilitate corruption - it's entire corporate set up is designed to take advantage of and process corruption in the most efficient and difficult to uncover manner, utilising a number of front companies set up in the British Virgin Islands.

The next strand is Merex, the deeply dubious, Nazi-founded, arms supplier to third world dictatorships and warlords.  Merex was, for a while, an American and European intelligence source, but was eventually cut loose due to its disturbing tendency to sell arms to anyone, regardless of ideology.  Like Soviet-leaning nations, for instance.  Merex's representatives also had a fairly common trait of being completely untrustworthy, but the Nazi reputation was of certain benefit in the Middle East, and so the company survived the ire of American and European intelligence.  Merex also played pretty much every side of the Yugoslav breakup, first supplying arms to Croations, then to Bosnian Serbs, then to Bosnian Muslims.  It even provided Radovan Karadžić with a Russian WMD.

Merex's work in Africa also proves a fruitful digression into Liberia, and the nightmare that is Charles Taylor's regime.  Also associated characters, such as Viktor Bout.

Then Feinstein turns his attention to America.  And this section is simply staggering in its detail.  Did you know it's not illegal for a Pentagon official to use their position to get their family members positions within a company whose weapons they may be procuring?  That the Pentagon hasn't been audited in 20 years?  That at one point, the B-1 bomber was going to bring down the entire US military due to its extremely high costs, yet the military was just going to keep on procuring it?  That Robert Gates threatened to eat a General's lunch if he didn't STFU about the F-22?

But yes.  If this sounds at all interesting, to anyone, I definitely recommend.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

I'm reading "Ha!" by Scott Weems and it's really, really good. A quick read, too. If you're interested in the neurobiology of humor, you should read it.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Rococo Modem Basilisk

I finished Starfish by Peter Watts, and I'm almost finished with Behemoth. I was about halfway through that book when I realized that I accidentally transposed the second and third book in the series -- I should have read Maelstrom before Behemoth. Anyhow, Watts produces dense, high-quality, cerebral hard-SF, and I'd recommend anyone with any interest in SF to at least pick up all the books that he's released for free on his site (so, Blindsight and the whole Rifters trilogy) and give them a go -- unless you have a predisposition toward suicidal depression (in which case, maybe stay far away from his site in general).


I am not "full of hate" as if I were some passive container. I am a generator of hate, and my rage is a renewable resource, like sunshine.

Cain

Sounds interesting.  Might read them sometime after Xmas, as I'll actually have free time then.

Prelate Diogenes Shandor

#2646
Erratically alternating between Terry Pratchett's The Long Earth, books of Dilbert and Pearls Before Swine comics, and rulebooks from old editions of Dungeons and Dragons

Edit:
Also Wikipedia articles, especially (for the time being) ones on the topics of grammar, particle physics, B-movies, and historical comedic art forms

EDIT:
What I've read so far of The Long Earth seems very good.

EDIT:
Also got some good leads on b-movies to check out from the wikipedia articles. "The Conquerer" and "Caligula" seem especially promising.
Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Mostly Ramachandran's "Phantoms in the Brain" interspersed with other stuff about brains and genetics.

I have been promised that by the end of this term I will have the knowledge to make my own phosphorescent pig.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Rococo Modem Basilisk

I recently finished William Gibson's The Peripheral. I think it lived up to the hype.

I also read Stephen Johnson's How We Got to Now, which was certainly worthwhile but was somewhat diminished by the fact that I had somehow managed to read about a quarter of the book in the form of excerpts in magazines already. It's a good book with a great idea -- pick a vague topic and then follow the history properly (thus avoiding lingering on larger than life mythic figures), producing a story about the topic rather than a story about the people who interacted with the topic during a particular period of its development. The book was a little too short for my taste. I look forward to seeing the TV show that goes with the book, as soon as it gets stuck on netflix.

I started Richard Kadrey's Metrophage, but I think I'm going to need to put it down and read something else for a while, because it seems like it's going to require more intense focus to follow than the other things I've been reading.

In the queue, I have:
- Shovel Ready by Adam Sternberg
- The Six-Gun Tarot by R. S. Belcher
- The last three books in the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya series, by Nagaru Tanigawa -- these three came out in Japan after the first book got published in the United States, and so they are the only ones I haven't read in unofficial translations.


I am not "full of hate" as if I were some passive container. I am a generator of hate, and my rage is a renewable resource, like sunshine.

minuspace

Just nearly finished Flowers For Algernon, taking a break, something's got stuck in my eye. *clears throat*

BeaArthurDent

Currently reading Starry Speculative Corpse: Horror of Philosophy Volume 2 by Eugene Thacker. He often references the concept of the world without relation to human ideas or darkness as that beyond human comprehension in a way that reminds me of the concept of Chaos beyond order and disorder.

LMNO

Just wanted to say your screen name is awesome.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Prelate Diogenes Shandor

Ready Player 1, which is basically a cyberpunk retelling of the golden ticket contest portion of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago

Vanadium Gryllz

Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on May 07, 2015, 03:48:55 AM
Ready Player 1, which is basically a cyberpunk retelling of the golden ticket contest portion of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

I really enjoyed that book.
"I was fine until my skin came off.  I'm never going to South Attelboro again."