Rhodesia, Foreign Aid, Mexican Massacre, Pakistan, Edward Lucas
Alexandra Fuller’s African Childhood
Anne Enright | Guardian | 18th December 2014
Thrilling, lyrical account of Fuller's memoir Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight, about growing up in colonial Rhodesia. The country is at war, the whites are losing, her parents are mostly drunk. "They continue, through war, drought, bad harvests, the birth of their children and the loss of their children, to have fun, to drink and party and play cards, to dance and have another drink, and then drink a whole lot more" (1,900 words)
King Of The Dump
Jared Downing | Roads And Kingdoms | 19th December 2014
Beguiling portrait of a refugee village atop a garbage dump on the Thai-Burmese border. An elderly Brit has been there for years. NGOs and aid workers come and go offering short-lived programmes and vying for attention. The villagers respond "like children of divorcées playing their parents against one another for better presents". They treat aid "as a kind of consumable resource that allows them to remain on the trash" (2,860 words)
The Disappeared
John Gibler | California Sunday Magazine | 18th December 2014 | Metered paywall
Full and atrocious story of the 43 Mexican students kidnapped and murdered in September. Mexico has seen bigger massacres in recent years, but this one provoked unprecedented national anger: "Perhaps it was the scale of the violence, or the sheer brutality, or that the victims were college students, or that the perpetrators were mostly municipal police, or that the mayor and the police chief were probably behind the attack" (6,000 words)
Why Pakistan Shields Terrorists
Shikha Dalmia | The Week | 19th December 2014
The slaughter of school children in Peshawar ought surely be enough to persuade Pakistan that it cannot go on harbouring the Taliban. And yet, Pakistan will probably not change its behaviour. Its generals are determined to maintain the Taliban as a weapon against India. The Pakistani government will find it easier to ride out public outrage over this massacre than to take on its own army and intelligence services (1,050 words)
Interview: Edward Lucas On Russia
Alec Ash | Five Books | 19th December 2014
Discussion of best recent books on modern Russia, including Putin’s Kleptocracy by Karen Dawisha, and Internal Colonization by Alexander Etkind. "The whole idea of choice is anathema to the Kremlin. It believes that proximity to Russia should inherently limit the sovereignty of the countries concerned ... Mr Putin is a man in a hurry. He needs a gamechanger, and I fear he will find one" (1,200 words)
Video of the day: Stephen Colbert's Final Word
What to expect: Extract from the final Colbert Report. The man who samed the world (4'50")
Thought for the day
Boredom is rage spread thin
Paul Tillich