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Review: Architectures of Violence - The Command Structures of Modern Mass Atrocities - by Kate Ferguson

I discovered this book at Chatham House library. The front cover image of Arkan with his trademark white tiger gave away a lot of the subject detail of the book. It focuses on the war of the former Yugoslavia. Later in the work we touch upon the mass atrocities in other wars such as in Syria and Rwanda and also look at the Rohingya refugee crisis and the actions of Burma. Deep analyses of all…

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#Arkan #bosnia #Brendan Simms #Burma #Croatia #genocide #izetbegovic #Kate Ferguson #Kosovo #milosevic #Rohingya #Rwanda #serbia #Serbophilia #war #Yogoslavia

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Review: Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia To Confront The West - by Keir Giles

I am a new member of Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, in London. On a recent visit, I made use of the vast resources of a very well-stocked library at Chatham House and this book is the first of the loans that I have finished reading. It is apt as Keir Giles is indeed a senior consulting fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House. He is an expert on…

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#Arab #Armageddon #autocracy #Baltic States #Baltics #biffer #Brezhnev #Catherine the Great #Chatham House #Christian Missionaries #cold war #communism #communist #democracy #diplomat #europe #foreign policy #geoplotics #Gorbachev #Hitler #Keri Giles #KGB #Khrushchev #Kyiv #Little Russia #MAD #middle east #Mikhail Gorbachev #miltary #Moscow

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Review: Before Bletchley Park – The Codebreakers of The First World War – by Paul Gannon

I have previously read a lot of material on World War 2 codebreakers and the likes of Alan Turing and their critical work against Enigma and the invention of modern computing during that period. Of course, codebreaking and cryptography is not a new science and has been a critical part of both war and diplomacy since ancient times and has only increased in significance as time progresses. World…

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#aircraft war #Alan Turing #Allies #America #Atlantic #Bletchley Park #Britain #British Navy #cables #Caesar cipher #codebreaking #compuers #crossword #cryptanalysis #cryptography #cybersecurity #decryption #Enigma #ENigma Machine #Four Four Cyber #gchq #Geran codebooks #german #German military #German Navy #Germany #Horseguards Parade #israel #Italian #Kaiser

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Review: Queens of the Crusades – by Alison Weir

I had previously read Alison Weir’s most excellent book specifically on Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine many years ago so the author was familiar to me. I chanced upon this title in my local library (Caldicot) and thought I’d give it a go. It covers the lives of several British Queens, or rather the historical period in England during which they lived. The period is one of the most interesting…

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#1215 #Alienor of Provence #Alison Weir #Aquitaine #barons #battle #Berengeria of Navarre #British Empire #British Hostory #British Queens #Brittany #Caernarfon #Caernarfon Castle #Caldicot #cardiff #Chepstow #consanguinity #Constantinople #constitution #Continental Europe #Cross #dominions #Edward I #Ekleanor of Castile #Eleanor of Aquitaine #English Queens #europe #European Royal #france #French

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Review: MI9: A History of the Secret Service for Escape and Evasion in World War Two - by Helen Fry

I randomly found this book on the shelves of Caldicot library. I read a lot of books on U.K. Intelligence services: MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. During the war…. Mt grandfather (GaGa) was in 618 Squadron RAF and 143 Coastal Command. He didn’t really speak to me much about World War 2 itself until quite late on in his life. Typical of an Armed Forces Officer, though, he kept a pristine home and in part of…

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#centuryofgaga #100th birthday #143 COastal COmmand #618 Squadron #Alan Turing #army #Asia #Belgium #Bletchley Park #Burma #Caldicot #Caldicot Library #Colditz #Comet Line #computers #D-Day #Dédée #Enigma Code #Esacape and Evasion #Escape from Colditz #Escape to Victory #espionage #france #gadgets #Gaga #gchq #Germany #God #Helen Fry #HighFlight

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Review: Defending the Realm - MI5 and the Shayler Affair - by Mark Hollingsworth and Nick Fielding

This is just another one of the many books I’ve read on the security services / spies / intelligence agencies in general. I guess I have a morbid fascination. Non-fiction throws up some pretty weird stuff – Life itself is a lot stranger than fiction. This tale from a turncoat ex MI5 employee David Shayler, comes from a time of great change in the world, Security Services in general and it…

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#Afghanistan #Beijing #Belmarsh #betrayal #Birtish Empire #Britiain #British Press #Capitalism #Chiona #CIA #City of London #cold war #Colonel Gadaffi #Commonwealth #communism #commusit #computers #crime #criminal #Daily Mail #Dame Stella Rimington #David Shayler #death penalty #Donald Trump #DPRK #enemy of the state #espionage #execution #france #gchq

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Review: The Assault On Truth - Boris Johnson and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism - by Peter Oborne

I think everyone that has ever heard of Boris Johnson associates him with lies. Oborne, who is an established veteran political journalist, in this relatively brief text, exposes the extent of the former Conservative Prime Minister’s almost total aversion to the truth. He reckons Johnson has told over thousands of lies and although the scope of the book is not to document every single lie and…

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#Angela Merkel #Atlantic #Bill Clinton #Boris Johnson #British society #Code of Conduct #Conservative #Conservatives #Donald Trump #East German #East Germany #ethics #Eton #Etonian #false #Germany #government #integrity #Iraq #Iraq War #journlaist #liar #lies #media #military #Ministerial Code #morality #Parliament #Peter Oborne #politician

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Review: Adventure Everywhere - Pablo Picasso's Paris Nightlife - by Dave Haslam

I like the art of Picasso, I like the city of Paris, and I like the books of Dave Haslam. I was therefore pleased to hear of the release of this book which studies the life and art of famous Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso, in particular his séjour in the vibrant cultural capital of France, Paris, during the Belle Époque, where the artist was free to explore exciting new art styles such as…

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#Apollinaire #art #Art Decades #artist #Ballets Russes #Belle Époque #café #Cirque Medrano #clubs #Configo Publishing #Cubism #culture #Dave Haslam #DJ #drugs #erotic #famous artist #france #French #Haçienda #love #Manchester #Montmartre #narcotics #nightclubs #nightlife #Nijinsky #opium #Pablo Picasso #Paris

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Review: We May Win We May Lose - by Jim 'Shaft' Ryan

Jim ‘Shaft’ Ryan is a famous house music DJ from Birmingham who along with his brothers, Mick and Dermot, and their mate Lee,  responsible for the seminary U.K. and global nightclub brands, Miss Moneypennys and Chuff Chuff. Jim is also my mate. I knew that Jim had trained as a Catholic priest before becoming entangled in the acid house movement and I know he does quite a bit of academic work.…

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#12" single #acid house #anthology #Birmingham #Black Country #Black COuntry Radio #catholic #Chuff Chuff #clubbing #DJ #Fear Panic and Chaos #house music #Irish #Jim &039;Shaft&039; Ryan #meter #Miss Moneypennys #modern life #morality #nightclubs #philosophy #poem #poet #poetry #religion #rhyme #U.K. #We May Win We May Lose

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Review: Turkish Awakening - A Personal Discovery of Modern Turkey - by Alev Scott

Alev Scott is a young female Brit whose mother has Turkish Cypriot roots and in this great study of modern turkey she relocates to Istanbul and immerses herself as much as possible in Turkish society Long time leader Erdogan, has done a lot to change Turkey in the past couple of decades in which he has held power. Some of it has gone down well but there has also been a great deal of controversy.…

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#Alev Scott #Armenia #Armenian #Ataturk #business #camel wrestling #Cyriot #East #economics #Erdogan #europe #football #Gezi Park #headscarves #Islam #Islamic State #Istanbul #Kemal Ataturk #Kurd #Kurdish #Kurds #London #Muslim #New York #PKK #politics #prostitution #secular #secularism #transexxual

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Review: Rights of Man - by Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine is an important writer at an important time that bequeaths us in his ‘Rights of Man’ a fundamental shakeup of what our democratic rights as citizens should be, drawing especially on the French Revolution and also American Revolution and the fundamental rights that their new revolutionary societies produced for their citizens. Paine delivers during the Enlightenment a wake up call to…

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#1789 #American Revolution #Bill Of Rights #Britain #constitutional monarchy #democracy #Edmund Burke #enlightenment #French revolution #guillotine #hereditary peer #human rights #Jean-JAcques Rousseau #King #monarchy #Paris #philosophy #politics #Queen #revolution #Rights of Man #Rights of the Citizen #Ropusseau #Royal #The Social COntract #The Terror #Thomas Paine #treason #U.K. #United Kingdom

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Review: The Origins of Totalitariansm - by Hannah Arendt

This book is quite old, first published in 1951, it dates from a period when the totalitarian reality of Hitler and Stalin were very much fresh in the mind. Hannah Arendt was a German Jew and this work is both philosophical, enlightening and gives a valuable educated insight into the dark political reality of totalitarianism. It’s a relatively modern political phenomenon and the in depth analysis…

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#1984 #Adolf Hitler #anti-semitism #Anuimal Farjm #Benito Mussolini #Boris Johnson #china #communism #communist #concentration camp #court Jew #crime #Diane Abbot #dictator #DPRK #Fascism #franco #george orwell #German Jew #Gneral Franco #Gulag #Gwermany #Hannah Arendt #Hitler #holocaust #human rights #Jeremy Corbyn #Jew #Jewish #Josef Stalin

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Zlata's Diary - A Child's Life in Sarajevo - by Zlata Filipović

What’s a grown 45 year old male doing reading a little Bosnian girl’s diary you might ask yourself. Well, it cropped up as a recommendation in a documentary on the war in the former Yugoslavia, a subject to which I have passionately researched from its genesis. The Balkans conflict is (to date) the worst conflict that has taken place on European soil since World War 2 (although Ukraine must now…

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#Anne Frank #Autobiography #Balkans #Balkans Conflict #Battle of Britain #Blitz #Blue Peter #bombs #bosnia #Bosnia-Herzegovina #Bosnian #Bosnian-Croat #Bosnian-Serb #children #crime #Croat #Croatian #diary #East End #French #french journalists #London #Mariupol #military #Mimmy #Msulim #Muslims #philosophy #russia #Sarajevo

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Review: Forty Nights - by Chris Thrall

I read ‘Eating Smoke’ some time ago, Chris’ autobiographic story of descent into Crystal Meth psychosis while working for the Triads in Hong Kong. It was a great story and I loved that book. I noticed that Chris was appearing regularly on the BBC as an ‘expert’ on a; sorts of drugs stories etc so I guess the book did well and got him a high profile. After reading and reviewing ‘Eating Smoke’ I…

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#1990s #addiction #Africa #amphetamines #art #BBC #Britiain #Chris Thrall #Chunks #civvy street #clubscene #Coleridge #council estate #council estates #crime #criminal #crystal meth #depravity #Devon #drugs #dwp #Eating Smoke #Ernest Hemigway #family #Forty Night #Great Britain #health #Hemigway #hong kong #Irvine Welsh

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Review: Red Horizons - The True Story of Nicolae & Elena Ceausescus' Crimes, Lifestyle, and Corruption - by Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa

I was just chatting away to Ionutz a security nurse in the local mental hospital and he’s Romanian. I passed through Bucharest a few years ago en route to Istanbul on a train journey traversing Eastern Europe. Romania seemed quite rural, poor and quite different to the Europe with which I am more acquainted. Curiosity and a quick Amazon search later and  I’ve got this rare gem of a book in my…

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#assassination #blackmail #Carlos the Jackal #cold war #Colonel Gadaffi #communism #communist #Communist dictator #death #democracy #dictator #dictatorship #DIE #directorate #East Germany #Elena Ceausescu #espionage #GDR #human rights #industrial espionage #Kremlin #Lt Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa #Marie Antoinette #middle east #NATO #Nicolae Ceausescu #Nicu Ceausescu #oppression #PAcepa #paranoia

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Review: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Under the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev there was a post-Stalin easing of oppression emerging from the Kremlin and a Cold War ‘Victorian’ Ice Age thaw for writers allowed this remarkable, unique, little tale to unbelievably evade the censor and make it into the real world, even traversing the fixed barriers of the Iron Curtain. It was common, particularly during the purges of Uncle Joe, to…

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#Alexander SOlzhenitsyn #BBC News #censor #censroship #cold war #communism #communist #concentration camp #culture #discipline #fiction #Gulag #human rights #Ivan Denisovich #justice #Khrushchev #Kremlin #mental hopsital #Nikita Khrushchev #NKVD #non-fiction #oppression #political prisoner #prison #prison literature #russia #russian #Russian author #Russian writer #sentence

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Review: The Master and Margarita - by Mikhail Bulgakov

I read a lot of Russian literature and am becoming a bit of an aficionado. This book was first recommended to me by an ex-girlfriend from Serbia and it’s taken me a while to actually get around to completing it but I finally have done so and can produce this review. Bulgakov is a twentieth century author of Russian fiction and lived during the heady epoch of Communism with its quite harsh…

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#Azazello #Behemoth #Bolsheviks #censorship #Christ #classic #communism #communist #crucifixion #death #demonic #demons #devil #dissidents #hell #Jesus Christ #Jewish #Koroviev #Lenin #Margarita #Master #Master and Margarita #Mikhail Bulgakov #Moscow #Palestine #Pontius Pilatae #Procurator #puragtory #russia #Russian Literature