THE CHAOS THEORY

“The Anarchist Cookbook” by William Powell

There’s a unique museum in Tallinn, Estonia, called the Museum of Banned Books. The museum displays all sorts of banned books from around the world, a lot of which are available for purchase in the museum’s shop.

But there’s 1 book that even the museum is not displaying, but they rather put it behind the counter, because it is too dangerous. So dangerous that even the writer himself years later after publication (1971) was trying to make the book banned. Can you guess what the book is? That’s right it’s this book, The Anarchist Cookbook.

The book has the best possible beginning in “A prefatory note on Anarchism today” chapter (in the 1989 version that I read), which describes what anarchy is all about, using an impressive range of literatures and ideas from figures as diverse as Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, and Henry David Thoreau. It provides the incredible historical context of the rise of anarchism that made my heart pounded and eyebrows raised (because most of what it said are still the problems in today’s unequal world), not to mention an excellent [1970s] geopolitical map that shows the justification of anarchic point of view towards the tainted governments (with the book written at the back of a protest against the Vietnam war and Nixon’s chaotic administration).

Which raises an important question, is anarchism the appropriate response to the corrupted status quo? That was certainly what the Puerto Rican rebels were thinking when they bombed an FBI headquarter, and the thinking behind the bombers of 10 abortion clinics in the US, among many other incidents, all of whom use this book as their guide.

Indeed, the book contains a lot of detailed guide about anarchism, including teaching us how to sabotage electronics, surveillance, and bugging devices. It also shows the manuals of different types of lethal and non-lethal weapons, from hand-to-hand combat, to knives, cattle prod, garrote, bows and arrows, to different types of guns and rifles, all of which shows how to use them properly (grip, timing, etc) and where they can inflict the most damages in the oppositions. And then the big one, how to make different variations of bombs, from chemicals and gasses, to explosives and booby traps, with variations from home-made hand grenade, to Molotov cocktail, and to bombs with timers or remote detonators.

One chapter that honestly baffles me is the one right after the introduction, on drugs, where the book shows the most detailed how-to guide to make them: seeding, cultivating, caring, harvesting, or for some drugs cooking and mixing chemicals. It covers drugs from weed, hashish, LSD, cocaine, heroin, psilocybin, to names I’ve never heard of like Peyote, DMT, Barbiturate, to as elementary as cough syrup, glue, and weirdly enough, banana. Why on Earth would the author, William Powell, begin the guide with how to make drugs? Is it perhaps to show an act of rebellious in the context of early 1970s hippie culture? Or is it to create a drugged up armies like the drugged Nazi soldiers before they went on a blitzkrieg? Now that’s scary.

The book closes with a very practical guide on demonstration, how to behave around the cops, what to do when you get arrested, as well as the phone numbers to call for a legal help, and closing it with the very last sentence “Freedom is based on respect, and respect must be earned by the spilling of blood.”

These practical knowledge have since made the book the go-to guide to rebel against the government and cause mayhem, just like what the Puerto Ricans did. This is what prompted Powell himself to eventually declare: “I want to state categorically that I am not in agreement with the contents of “The Anarchist Cookbook” and I would be very pleased (and relieved) to see its publication discontinued. I consider it to be a misguided and potentially dangerous publication which should be taken out of print.”

I mean, I get it. I understand why its own author was trying to ban it and even the Museum of Banned Books is hiding it. Because anyone who reads it can really start a chaos from scratch, which is bad news for any government or any controlling status quo. Hence, the difficulty to find this book anywhere today.

However, what about the balancing role over the corrupted? What can us the ordinary people do to stop those in high positions from abusing their power and constantly violating the laws with impunity? Well, whether you have an unexpressed rage against the machine or want to go as extreme as self immolating yourself like Thich Quang Duc, whether you want to start a low-risk peaceful protest or conduct a high-risk revolution, the first small step that you can take in any of the actions is simple: to remember this book.

Click here for the PDF version of the book.

“Everything is Figureoutable” by Marie Forleo

It is perhaps a bit unfair that this book was written after hundreds of self-help books before it.

It comes after the many brilliant ideas and insights from its predecessors, from the GOAT Dale Carnegie to the life-changing Anthony Robbins; from the guru Sadhguru to the philosopher Ryan Holiday; from the quirky Eric Barker and Mark Mason to the financially serious Morgan Housel; from the doctor Mark Hyman to the biohacker Dave Asprey; even from the OG con-artist Napoleon Hill to the modern-day [proven] fraud Robert Kiyosaki; and of course not to mention the contemporary self-help podcasters such as Jim Kwik, Tim Ferriss, Lewis Howes, Tom Bilyeu, Vishen Lakhiani, Jay Shetty; and the business-minded Simon Sinek, Brene Brown, and Adam Grant. And these are only the ones that made it to the top of the chain.

So what makes Marie Forleo stands out in the saturated self-help industry and perhaps be among this particular crowd? One catchphrase: Everything is figuroutable.

And this is where the book starts, the story of Forleo’s mother, who had a relatively tough life but can survive due to her resourcefulness. It is obvious where Forleo gets the idea of figureoutable from, and the short story made me initially hooked.

The book then proceeded to tell stories of everyday people confronting losses, illnesses, and pains; which are inspiring. It is a light enough read, but with weighted wisdom. It inspires, without pushing too much of its ideas. My favourite story got to be the story of Tererai, a child bride from rural Zimbabwe who struggled her way up from being a young mother of 5 constantly being beaten by her husband, to taught herself how to read, and after enduring hunger and hardship managed to eventually earn a PhD in the US and becoming a champion of African women’s education. Her life’s motto: Tinogona (it is achievable).

However, although the main figuroutable premise of the book is refreshing and the stories are intriguing, every other thing in the book are borrowed cliches from the self-help genre. There’s the usual mix: the story of putting a man on the moon, life-coach-styled chants, cringy action-points, and of course journaling complete with daily affirmations. With catchphrases such as your beliefs determine your destiny, train your brain to avoid destructive thoughts, and the encouragement to avoid distractions and be more productive. It even have testimonial boxes at the end of every chapter, from women (all of them are women) who are moved and grateful that Forleo has helped them.

And although Forleo’s personal stories give an intimate flavour to the book, they are contrasting the stories between the harsh struggles of other people and unemphatically highlighting Forleo’s privileges in her own journey to success. I mean, quitting from a job at the New York Stock Exchange (which she never explained how she got it) and rejecting an offer to work at Vogue magazine to create a life-coaching business at a young age of 23 are not necessarily rags to riches.

Another example is the Malala Yousafzai story in the book to inspire you to do your calling without fear – where Malala champions girls’ education with the risk of fury from the Taliban – but then contrasted later when Forleo is complaining about the fact that she and her actor boyfriend “had been together for seven years and not once had we taken a vacation together… I sat in our therapist’s office feeling angry, scared, and conflicted. From my point of view, one of the things I loved – my career – was threatening the relationship with the man I loved.”

I mean, I get the sentiment about finding your true calling and the difficulties to have a work-life balance, but her personal stories are poorly spread in between other harsher stories that dilute the appeal and make them look more like a humble brag (she eventually went on a vacation to Barcelona with her boyfriend, a story told in the book not long after the story about a woman who helped to end Liberia’s civil war).

Hence, the book could easily be a thin but masterclass book if only it focuses on the essentials, especially the chapters on fear and dismantling a damaging perfectionist trait. But instead it is standard-size length but with a lot of unnecessary noises, repetitions, humble-brag personal stories, and cliches in between that look a lot like a summary of previous self-help books.

So perhaps if the hundreds of self-help books before it did not exist, what is left in this book is only an overstretched essay around the concept of “everything is figuroutable” (which can easily be an article), and how she became a “multipassionate entrepreneur” (which is an ego fest). A truly chaotic mixed bag of great and disaster.

“Pol Pot’s Little Red Book: The Sayings of Angkar” by Henri Locard

This got to be one of the scariest books ever written.

Pol Pot ruled Cambodia for only 3 years, 8 months, and 20 days between 1975 and 1979. But during that relatively brief period of time he isolated the country from the rest of the world and abolished the followings: free markets, private property, schools, industrial factories, religious practices, foreign-style clothing, the traditional Khmer culture, newspapers, books, even abolished money and went as far as blowing up the central bank.

He also emptied the cities and forced the people to relocate to labor camps in the countryside to implement his agriculture plan for the country. This move was complemented with forced labor, mass executions (for those who rebel against it), and physical abuse; which resulted to mass malnutrition, disease, and massive death tolls due to overwork.

The immediate obvious question is of course, why?

This book – which I bought in a tiny bookshop in Siem Reap, Cambodia – provides the clearest clue about Pol Pot’s thinking, philosophy, and the rules that he made for the Khmer Rouge ideology during his brutal dictatorship.

It is, as the author Henri Locard remarks, “the sayings that made up a “newspeak” uttered by the mouths of the Khmer Rouge cadres: slogans, maxims, advice, instructions, watchwords, orders, warnings, and threats.” All of which were spoken in the name of “Ankar” (literally translated to “organization”), the faceless organization that was used to indoctrinate, control, and terrorized the people.

And that’s the fascinating part for me (if “fascinating” is the correct word). Unlike Orwellian “Big Brother” or indeed any other iron fist dictator from Stalin to Kim Jong-un, whose faces are plastered on every corner of the country, Pol Pot was simply called brother number one or referred to as no. 870 (the code number of the party center), while hardly any civilian knew what his face looks like in the first 2 years of Khmer Rouge’s rule. It was not until 27 September 1977 in a 5 hours speech when he reveals himself as the leader of the ruling Communist Party of Kampuchea.

The 433 sayings themselves were collected from the memories of survivors from all around Cambodia between 1991 and 1995. It is a mix between Cambodian traditional sayings, Chinese communist maxims, Khmer Rouge’s own rules, practical guides to everyday life (like fertilizing or farming), anti imperialist or anti feudalist sayings, and a lot more in between. Some are downright scary, but others are actually pretty good maxims to live by if taken in a normal context.

For example, in saying no. 63: “For the most glorious of revolutions, always practice thrift”, which looks like a normal everyday guide. But then the book crucially provide the context where this saying often accompanied by “for every measure of rice, we must set aside a handful.”

This, for Khmer Rouge, is translated as anyone who left even one grain of rice in the bottom of his bowl can be considered as an “enemy” of the revolution, and will be prosecuted for it. And during the prosecution the regime had to economize on the bullet, meaning, more often than not, the “traitor” will instead be knock senseless on the base of his neck with a hoe, until he died.

Indeed, in parts where it is not quite clear, the book provides the important additional context to the sayings, which turns out to be very sadistic. And this is a common case for many of the sayings, making the book a very valuable insight into the way the Khmer Rouge really operates.

In total, according to Locard, 2 million people died during the Khmer Rouge rule, which was roughly 25% of Cambodia’s entire population of 8 million. And it sends chills into my spine when thinking that the contents in the very book that I’m holding here can cause such a catastrophic human tragedy.

“The Fall” by Albert Camus

Jean-Baptiste Clemence is a stand up guy. He is a perfectly content man, with an excellent social relationships, a handsome wealth, a good reputation, and a good job that he loves as a defense lawyer in Paris. He has a kind heart too, where most of the people that he defended were “widow and orphan” cases, along with the poor and disenfranchised.

We get to know Clemence’s life story right from the beginning of the book, where he was found sitting in a bar in Amsterdam and started to talk with strangers to reflect on this perfect past life.

The choice of location in Amsterdam is particularly interesting, considering that Camus loves to set his stories in his native French Algeria. But it will make sense once we read this line early in the book, when Clemence said: “Have you noticed that Amsterdam’s concentric canals resemble the circles of hell? The middle-class hell, of course, peopled with bad dreams. When one comes from the outside, as one gradually goes through those circles, life – and hence its crimes – becomes denser, darker. Here, we are in the last circle.”

A decent guy sitting in the deepest circle of hell, in a sin city located below the sea level? Indeed, the book has plenty of symbolisms, where as the conversation continues we’ll also discover that the bar conversations take place on the backdrop of World War 2 and the Holocaust, which raised the question of that era of how can humankind be so evil?

This philosophical conundrum was given a more rich backstory when Clemence reveals that he lives not far from the bar, in the formerly Jewish quarter that was turned into a ghetto by the Nazis. And the name of the bar that he’s sitting in? Mexico City, which symbolized the destruction of the Aztec Civilization that the city then replaced. How did he end up here?

Late one night in his past life, when crossing the Pont Royal bridge in Paris on the way home from his mistress, Clemence walked pass a woman dressed in black leaning over the edge of the bridge to commit suicide. But he decided to ignore the sight and kept walking, when few minutes later he heard the distinct sound of a body hitting the water. Clemence stopped walking for a brief moment, but did nothing, knowing very well what just happened. He felt the urge to go back to help, but was too afraid of his own safety and afraid of being tied to the death.

As Clemence tells the story over several drunken nights at the Amsterdam bar, he recalls that the sound of screaming was repeated several times, then it abruptly gone. Total silence. He said that he wanted to run but yet didn’t move an inch. He was still listening at the silence as he stood motionless, before slowly, in the rain, he walked away and told nobody.

Several years later, after successfully blocking the memory from that night’s incident, he walked pass an empty Pont des Arts bridge (on the opposite of Pont Royal bridge) after a particularly good day at work, when he distinctly heard a laughter. It was a laughter between friends and not in any way directed towards him, but still it made him quite paranoid and remember the suicide. Not long after, he found himself in another incident involving a road rage where he was left getting punched by a jackass motorcyclist and get humiliated. This seems to finally hit his nerves, triggered an existentialist crisis in him over the illusion that everyone is trying to get him (and his inability to do anything about it), and sent him to a psychological downfall that questions his own self worth.

That’s right, these overblown reactions from the incidents were indeed the manifestation of his suppressed guilty feeling. At the deepest level he began to question himself whether he was really a good person and doubt his own ability to help people. And it changed him from a decent stand up guy into a bitter man spiraling down.

The proceeding conversation at the bar in Amsterdam then dwells around the topics of morality, decency, and even hypocrisy, through telling the stories of what he did afterwards: He left behind his perfect Paris life and first escaped to London, and then to North Africa where he eventually settled in Tunisia, before getting captured by the Germans and was put into a concentration camp; chain of events that would not happened if only he helped the suicidal woman, and all of which pushed him further more into the existentialist abyss.

Hence, the chilling statement at the end of the book, filled with regret: “Pronounce to yourself the words that years later haven’t ceased to resound through my nights, and which I will speak at last through your mouth: “O young woman, throw yourself again into the water so that I might have a second time the chance to save the two of us!”

As always with Albert Camus’ books, this short book is very dense with deep philosophical thinking. It is described by existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre as the most beautiful but the least understood of Camus’ books. Which I get it, because the book is narrated through a simple enough story but the thought-provoking philosophy was implied in lengthy conversations that are not easy to follow (due to the absence of quotation marks that often makes it unclear who was talking, among others).

Nevertheless, strip away the often confusing conversations and instead focus on the morals of the story, and we have ourselves one hell of a book.

“Impossible Things: Unbelievable Answers to the World’s Weirdest Questions” by Dan Schreiber

I love Dan Schreiber’s work. I listen to every single episode of “There’s No Such Thing As a Fish” podcast stretching back several years now, I also regularly listen to his other podcast “We Can Be Weirdos”, while his book “The Theory of Everything Else” is among my favorites of all time.

Hence, when he wrote a new book I immediately purchased it, no matter what it is about. As it turns out, it is another incredible book that covers a wide range of bizarre and impossible questions, this time questions asked by curious children where he is answering them all with concise clarity and sufficient amount of details, but not too much that it could overwhelm them.

That’s right, this is a book written for children (including me, a 500 months-old kid). And in a way this is perfect, since children have not been molded into our status-quo way of thinking, hence the questions can be pretty out-of-the-box. And that’s exactly where Dan excels. It is a well written and very interesting book, complete with all the drawings and quick fact boxes to make the reading experience kinda interractive, which makes it hard to put down once we start reading it (I devoured it within 24 hours).

It covers topics such as Loch Ness monster, Unicorn, Elf in Iceland, Yeti hunting in Bhutan, and Mongolian death worm. It also discusses everything about ghosts: their ghost hunters, the most haunted places, the oldest ghost ever recorded in history – a Babylonian ghost. It talks about aliens: including the earliest record of a UFO sightings (in 1947), The Roswell incident, those who secretly live among us (like David Bowie and Elvis Presley), Stephen Hawking’s scary comment about aliens, even entertaining the thought that maybe WE are the aliens that migrated to Earth from another planet.

Moreover, the book also talk bout time travel, about physic intuition, telepathy, telekinesis, learning to speak with trees and animals, about imaginary friend, immortality and its elixir of life, vampires, cursed items, on bad luck, the scenario that dinosaurs went to the moon before us, the possibility that we actually living in a Matrix, and for the love of [anything] can you please tell me who is “He Who Shall Also Not Be Named” and what was his cursed book?

All in all, it is such a fun book to read. It is the kind of book that teaches us to take things lighter, to accept that some things are still unexplainable, to not be a skeptic and instead to be open minded for all possibilities, even towards the ideas and imaginations that are just almost impossible. Afterall, a lot of things that are parts of our normal lives today were once considered as impossible, like refrigerator, the flying machine that we all now called airplanes, or purchasing Dan’s book on a Kindle app on my phone and completed reading it while being stuck on a taxi in a traffic jam in Jakarta – all done without visiting any physical bookstore. Explain that to your great great great grandfather.

If I was American I’d rather “waste” my vote on Jill Stein than choose 1 out of 2 genocide lovers: AIPAC (and J Street)-bribed Kamala Harris vs. Miriam Adelson-funded Donald Trump. Your big candidates are compromised by a foreign entity, and no it’s not Russia, Iran, or China.

But it doesn’t matter, does it? The US is not a democracy anyway, because the direct “popular votes” don’t really matter. In fact, as many as 5 presidents in US history have won the presidency without winning the popular vote:

1. In 1824 John Quincy Adams won the election despite Andrew Jackson had more popular votes.
2. In 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes won the presidency while losing the popular vote to Samuel J. Tilden.
3. In 1888 Benjamin Harrison won the election despite losing the popular vote to Grover Cleveland.
4. in 2000 George W. Bush won the presidential election despite losing the popular vote to Al Gore.
5. In 2016 Donald Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton but he became the president.

What gives? Enter the “Electoral College.” It is a voting mechanism in which Americans indirectly elect their president and vice president through their state’s electors. A majority of 538 electoral votes are at stake, with the candidates must secure 270 votes in order to win. Who are these 538 electors? Before the general election, states select candidate electors from both parties, which comprised of unnamed local elected officials, party leaders, community activist, etc; individuals who are chosen in honor of their service and dedication to their respective parties (yup, a big loophole here).

And after the November general election, the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote in a state will have the privilege to choose which slate of electors – Republican, Democrat, or a third party – that will cast the electoral votes in that state. The official electoral college election will then be held in their respective states in the first Tuesday after the second Wednesday in December (which will be on 17 December this year).

But here’s the catch, the electoral voters are not obligated to vote in line with the popular vote result in their state, and thus they are technically free to vote for anyone they wanted (although they usually comply with their party’s decision). And here’s where it gets complicated: There are 538 electoral college votes but only 50 states + Puerto Rico, and the distribution of electoral college votes are not equal for every state (and the reason behind it has a racist past, involving “slave states”).

That’s why Harris and Trump only focus their campaign on 7 “swing states” with the most electoral college votes (most notably Pennsylvania that have 19 votes, which is predicted to be the tipping point of this election) outside the likes of California with 54 votes who tend to be Democrat-base, or Texas Republican base with 40 votes.

It’s all fun and game, until you realise that this complicated voting system is designed to prevent a popular candidate to win, which in 5 cases were not the same persons as the electoral college winners. Or more specifically, it was historically created to prevent the peasants to outvote the constitution framers (the status quo).

So, if you ever wondered why the only choice that America has – to quote South Park – is only between “A giant Douche vs. A Turd Sandwich”, well it is by design. A “third party candidate” like Jill Stein won’t stand a chance. But to me, if I was American, voting for her would be better for my conscience than voting for the genocidal plutocracy that doesn’t really serve the interest of the American people anymore.

“The Plague” by Albert Camus

This is a horrifying read about the seemingly minute-by-minute account of the Plague in the French Algerian city of Oren.

It is told through the main vantage point of a doctor as well as several other fictitious characters in the story, with every single one of them has different attitude and reaction towards the growingly worrying pandemic.

And it is growingly, alright. Where the book takes us into the slow but steady realization that something is wrong, very wrong, an apocalypse-level wrong. And by the time they realized that this is something gravely dangerous, it’s all almost too late.

It is a story of powerlessness and resilience, in navigating life in the midst of a turbulent wave. It is a projection of extremes between suffering and compassion, madness and hope. And most of all, it is a tale of surviving death.

It feels too similar like the Covid pandemic that we all just experienced 4 years ago; all that quarantine, the social distancing, the protests, the overloaded hospitals, the serums (vaccines), the overworked social workers, even the silent mass burials where no family member can attend.

And the book perfectly captured the overall atmosphere when it was published in 1947. Camus nailed it.

“Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost its Empire and the West Lost the World” by Patrick J. Buchanan

I found this book when I was searching about the alternative history of World War II.

Previously, the widely-accepted narrative was pretty simple: Hitler triggered World War II after Nazi Germany launched a surprise attack on Poland 1 September 1939, which prompted a response from the Allied power (which consist of Britain, United States, Russia, China, and France). And when the Allied power won the war 6 years later, the good guys prevailed.

The common narrative will also say the moves by the Allies was necessary, to bring down Prussian militarism in Word War I that threatened to dominate Europe and the world, and to stop a fanatic Nazi dictator in 1939 who “would otherwise have conquered Europe and the world, enslaved mankind, massacred minorities on a mammoth scale, and brought on a new Dark Age. And thank God Britain did declare war. Were it not for Britain, we would all be speaking German now.”

But the recent events in world geopolitics 2023-2024 made me questioning this narrative. Were the good guys really won the war? After all, post World War II was the period of time when the biggest winner of the war, United States, became the dominant imperial power in the world, where everything from the UN, World Bank, IMF, WTO, were all created for the benefit of the US and allies, which they frequently abuse by “opening up markets” abroad while still imposing tariffs domestically. And guess who are the permanent members of the UN Security Council (with veto power), the supposedly “police of the world”? Exactly, Britain, United States, Russia, China, and France, all the Allied power.

The ongoing genocide by Israel is also an eye opener, where no sanction imposed on Israel, even though the ICJ has declared that their actions are war crimes and an intent of genocide, simply because the West is funding them and supplying them with the weapons. Is international law no longer applicable, even when Israel is starting to attack their neighboring sovereign countries? Of course it is still valid, but only when Iran and Lebanon retaliate, or If Russia (who has since the 1950s became the enemy of the West) is the one who is doing the war crimes.

So, why this book? The author, Patrick “Pat” Joseph Buchanan, was an assistant and special consultant to US Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. He was also a presidential candidate at one point in 1992. But perhaps he is more famous for being fired in 2012 from his job as a political commentator at the MSNBC network after he said minorities in the US will soon outnumber white Americans and that the country “is disintegrating, ethnically, culturally, morally, politically.” He is also labelled as a racist due to his open affiliation with white supremacist (allegedly, as claimed by Anti-Defamation League) and for blaming non-white immigrants (Hispanic in particular) for destroying white European heritage. Nasty human being, by the look of it. Some even said that if we want to understand Donald Trump politics today, we just need to see what Pat Buchanan did in the 1990s.

However, while his tone and intention look racist (at least through secondary sources), unlike Trump he did wrap this racist opinion based on solid data. And the data shows that in this rate of growth white Americans will indeed be a minority in the 2040s with Hispanic community taking over, that America’s white European heritage could be affected (with Latin culture could become the dominant force instead, which is nothing wrong, but I guess for a white racist American it would be a disaster).

Moreover, in 1999 he predicted that NATO expansion could cause Russia-Ukraine-US war, which is exactly what’s going on right now. And he also correctly predicted an immigration problem from Muslim refugees especially in Europe, although, again, he delivered the prediction in a borderline Islamophobic tone (at least from the way it was written on a report about him) and ignored the cause of the immigration: US atrocities in the Middle East.

So, why do I bother reading this kind of American-centric xenophobia? Because if we remove the bigotry, we’ll likely to find the harsh truths.

Pat Buchanan has also predicted that the sovereignty of the United States will be undermined by Israeli control, which turns out to be true and being revealed massively this year. Buchanan also criticized then-Vice President Biden in 2010 when he visited Israel, where Buchanan commented that Biden “was played for a fool” when Israel decided to build new settlement homes anyway in disputed area, something that didn’t change 14 years later when Biden keep supplying Netanyahu with billions of dollars of aid and weapons supplies in their genocide in Gaza (a place where Buchanan was vocal about lifting the siege there) despite Israel keep on doing what Biden administration warn them not to do.

Another Buchanan’s prediction can be traced back to 2005 when he said that Israel’s control over US foreign policy will drag the latter to the next war: the unnecessary war with Iran. Which is all too real today, where a lot of things that he predicted also came true today, down to the minor details such as his 1990 comment that the Congress is an “Israeli-occupied territory”; which got a backlash back then, but just look at the openly AIPAC-bribed Congress right now (not to mention Biden cabinet’s full of dual Israeli citizenship). In 2009 he also commented that the hundreds of Palestinians killed in the Gaza “concentration camp” will create a bunch of new Hamas fighters who want revenge on Israel; something that many in the West refuse to acknowledge and instead sticking to their tired old “Islamist jihadist” doctrine.

So, it got me thinking, is this guy really crazy, racist, and all that, or is he just being shunned by the status quo? And what else is Buchanan telling the blatant truth about but perhaps delivering it in a wrong way (or made it look wrong in the secondary sources)? Enter this book, where he shed a light into what really happened in World War I and World War II.

Buchanan made it very clear from the start that the focus of the book is not questioning whether Hitler and Nazi Germany is evil and whether the British were heroic (both are already established as such), but instead it is questioning whether the British’s statesmen were wise PRIOR to the wars and subsequently DURING the war after their failure to prevent a war have led to disastrous decision makings that made things gotten out of hand? As Buchanan explains, “[f]or their crimes, Hitler and his collaborators, today’s metaphors for absolute evil, received the ruthless justice they deserved. But we cannot ignore the costs of Churchill’s wars, or the question: Was it truly necessary that fifty million die to bring Hitler down? For World War II was the worst evil ever to befall Christians and Jews and may prove the mortal blow that brings down our common civilization. Was it “The Unnecessary War”?”

And this is his thesis, which cover World War I and World War II: “Had Britain not declared war on Germany in 1914, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and India would not have followed the Mother Country in. Nor would Britain’s ally Japan. Nor would Italy, which London lured in with secret bribes of territory from the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. Nor would America have gone to war had Britain stayed out. Germany would have been victorious, perhaps in months. There would have been no Lenin, no Stalin, no Versailles, no Hitler, no Holocaust.” In other words, there would be no WORLD war.

World War II was also an unnecessary blunder by Winston Churchill that led to the rise of Soviet Iron Curtain (which would proceeded to kill much more people than the Nazis). Previously, Britain had a choice between 2 tyrants in Hitler’s Nazi (that control Central Europe) and Stalin’s Bolshevik (that control Eastern Europe), and they chose to be ally with Stalin and fight Hitler. Which was a strange decision, because as Buchanan remarks, “neither the Kaiser nor Hitler sought to destroy Britain or her empire. Both admired what Britain had built. Both sought an alliance with England. The Kaiser was the eldest grandson of Queen Victoria. Thus the crucial question: Were these two devastating wars Britain declared on Germany wars of necessity, or wars of choice?”

Britain did so by creating an alliance with Poland. As Buchanan elaborates, “[h]ad Britain not given a war guarantee to Poland in March 1939, then declared war on September 3, bringing in South Africa, Canada, Australia, India, New Zealand, and the United States, a German-Polish war might never have become a six-year world war in which fifty million would perish.” Which prompted Buchanan to question in other chapter, “[i]f Hitler’s ambitions were in the east, and he was prepared to respect Britain’s vital interests by leaving the Low Countries and France alone, was it wise to declare war on Germany—over a Poland that Britain could not save?”

Yes, a lot of what ifs. However, Buchanan is constructing his arguments using primary and secondary sources, which makes the narrative of the book iron clad with facts. Narrative that gives us the big picture of the geopolitical map before World War I, the behind the scene politicking in the interwar period, and the diplomatic and military strategies used during both World Wars. Which is all very gripping to read. Of course, I had to be careful in reading it, in differentiating between historical facts and his opinions. And I concur that it wasn’t always clear. But when it’s clear, it reveals a lot of new things.

Such as Churchill’s many sins: “Churchill was unafraid to break the rules of war. As he had been prepared to blockade Antwerp before the Germans invaded, so he brushed aside international law, mined the North Sea, and imposed upon Germany a starvation blockade that violated all previous norms of civilized warfare. In the war’s first week, Churchill had wanted to occupy Ameland, one of the Dutch Frisian Islands, though Holland was neutral. To Churchill, writes Martin Gilbert, “Dutch neutrality need be no obstacle.” Churchill urged a blockade of the Dardanelles while Turkey was still neutral.”

Moreover, Buchanan continues, “[i]n December 1914, he recommended that the Royal Navy seize the Danish island of Bornholm, though Denmark, too, was neutral. Yet it had been Berlin’s violation of Belgium’s neutrality that Churchill invoked as a moral outrage to convince Lloyd George to support war on Germany and that had brought the British people around to support war. When the Germans accommodated Britain’s war party by regarding the 1839 treaty as a “scrap of paper,” the relief of Grey and Churchill must have been immense. The declaration of war was their triumph. And when British divisions crossed the Channel, the troops were sent, as the secret war plans dictated, not to brave little Belgium but straight to France.”

The book also reveals the injustice imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, which put the war reparation cost of World War I on the Germans: “Men who believe in the rule of law believe in the sanctity of contract. But a contract in which one party is not allowed to be heard and is forced to sign at the point of a gun is invalid. Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles only when threatened that, should she refuse, the country would be invaded and her people further starved. Though Napoleon’s foreign minister Talleyrand had been invited to Vienna to negotiate the peace of Europe, no German had been invited to Paris. Francesco Nitti, the prime minister of Italy when Versailles was signed, in his book The Wreck of Europe, expressed his disgust at the injustice.”

As a result, the implementation of the Treaty wrecked havoc Germany’s economy, caused the lost of purchasing power due to hyperinflation, and the overall drop on quality of living, which paved way to the rise of a populist figure who wanted to get the demoralized Germany back to its glory days (and even took revenge to the perpetrators). As Buchanan remarks, “[a]t a London dinner party soon after Adolf Hitler had taken power in Berlin, one of the guests asked aloud, “By the way, where was Hitler born?” “At Versailles” was the instant reply of Lady Astor.” In fact, Hitler first caught the public attention by delivering again and again a speech that he titled “the Treaty of Versailles.”

Just look at Hitler’s speech that mentions Jews for the first time. As Buchanan describes, “[t]hree months after Kristallnacht, on the sixth anniversary of his assumption of power, January 29, 1939, Hitler, in a speech to the Reichstag, publicly threatened the Jews of Europe. America, Britain, and France, he charged, “were continually being stirred up to hatred of Germany and the German people by Jewish and non-Jewish agitators.” Hitler then issued his threat: In the course of my life I have often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it.… I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”

But the Nazis didn’t prosecute Jews in 1939, also not in 1940. Instead, “[t]hey began after Hitler invaded Russia, June 22, 1941, when the Einsatzgruppen trailed the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union exterminating Bolsheviks, commissars, and Jews. Writes Ian Kershaw, “[T]he German invasion of the Soviet Union triggered the rapid descent into full-scale genocide against the Jews.””

Hence, one of the big questions in the book, “[h]ad there been no war, would there have been a Holocaust at all? In The World Crisis, Churchill, the Dardanelles disaster in mind, wrote: “[T]he terrible Ifs accumulate.” If Britain had not issued the war guarantee [with Poland] and then declared war on Germany, Hitler might never have invaded France. Had he not, Mussolini would never have invaded France or Greece, or declared war on England. With no war in the west, all the Jews of Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Italy, Yugoslavia, and Greece might have survived a German-Polish or Nazi-Soviet war, as the Jews of Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland survived.”

But why invade France, you might ask? Because Poland is at Germany’s eastern border, which is now backed by Britain, and Germany will be attacked by Britain from the west. Hence, the need for Germany to create a buffer at France, Belgium, and the Netherlands to prevent Britain to get close to Germany (and not, as the common misconception suggest, due to Hitler’s imperial ambitions).

And why invade Soviet? As Buchanan remarks, “[o]n January 8, 1941, Hitler clarified and expanded upon his reasoning for attacking Russia: Britain is sustained in this struggle by hopes placed in U.S.A. and Russia.… Britain’s aim for some time to come will be to set Russia’s strength in motion against us. If the U.S.A. and Russia should enter the war against Germany the situation would become very complicated. Hence any possibility for such a threat to develop must be eliminated at the very outset.” Buchanan then continues, “[i]n early June, Hitler spoke to General Fritz Halder, who wrote in a diary entry of June 14: Hitler “calculates ‘that the collapse of Russia will induce England to give up the struggle. The main enemy is still Britain.’””

Indeed, the key to trigger a WORLD war, it seems, is the alliances and their war pacts. Which is why the Britain-Poland pact was crucial in triggering World War II. As Buchanan elaborates, “[b]ut because Britain issued the guarantee to Poland and declared war on Germany, by June 1941 Hitler held hostage most of the Jews of Western Europe and the Balkans. By 1942, after invading Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic states, and Russia, he held hostage virtually the entire Jewish population of Europe.”

Is that what the Jews were for Hitler, hostages for leverage against the Bolsheviks?? But what’s the significance of the Jews for the Bolsheviks, that made Hitler think it’s important to hold them hostage? This line from chapter 14 shed a little light into this: “Though a philo-Semite and supporter of Zionism, Churchill’s views on the roots of Bolshevism seem not markedly different from those of Hitler. In the Illustrated Sunday Herald of February 8, 1920, after the failed Allied intervention in Russia, Churchill wrote that in the “creation of Bolshevism” the role of “atheistical Jews … probably outweighs all others.”

And here’s the dark truth, even with so many Jews were captured “neither the Allies nor the Soviets were focused on the potential fate of the hostages Hitler held. At Casablanca in 1943, Churchill and FDR declared their war aim was “unconditional surrender.” At Quebec in 1944, Churchill and FDR approved the Morgenthau Plan calling for the destruction of all German industry. Goebbels used the Morgenthau Plan to convince Germans that surrender meant no survival. Annihilation of their hostages was the price the Nazis exacted for their own annihilation.”

Did you capture that? The reason why the Nazis killed all of the Jewish [hostages] is because they’re not a useful leverage after all, because the allied powers didn’t really care about them. And then the Nazis proceeded to annihilate 6 million hostages in a tit-for-tat of the allies killing the Germans, all of which accounted as part of the death of 50 million civilians + 25 million military personnels in World War II. Of course the Nazis and Hitler are still evil for killing all of the Jews, but Britain, France, US, and Soviet are equally at fault for not giving maximum diplomatic and military efforts to save them.

There are so many more similar revelations in this book that I cannot possibly name them one by one, including one whole chapter about Hitler’s ambitions (including evidences that he never intended to invade western Europe), one whole chapter about Churchill’s track records, and the post-war events where the US took control over the world’s power. It is one of the clearest books that explains the background chaos behind World War I and II, with impressive details. It is as if Buchanan has read every single book about the World Wars, from the big picture by great scholars, to individual biographies, to even any letters and notes that he can find. It is one of those instances where I don’t have to like the author in order to appreciate his book.

It is a massive book about massive topics that is not necessarily providing us with anything new, but rather pointing us to the area of history that are publicly available but often ignored: It shows the diplomatic side of Hitler, the politician rather than only the warmongering dictator. It also shows that Churchill and the allied powers are also conducting many evil things when the war broke out, even provoking Hitler to conduct his own evil actions (which was then highlighted as arguably the most evil action anyone has ever done – more evil than Mobutu killing 20 million people in Congo, Mao killing 40-80 million of his people, the genocide of 56 million Native Americans, or indeed Stalin killing 20 million people – In other words, they showed the reaction but not the cause).

And it raised the ultimate question: were the two World Wars preventable? Yes, yes they were. Even the Holocaust was also preventable, because after Poland surrendered on 6 October 1939 Hitler made a peace offer to Britain and France, but it was turned down. Hitler also offered peace in July 1940 after he conquered France for buffer and before he attacked Britain, but again the offer was rejected by Churchill. And if you recall, these events were before any action taken against the Jews in 1941.

All of which make Churchill’s famous quotation a bit more sense: “history is written by the victors.” Because how come Hitler who killed 6 Jews is [rightly] labelled as evil, but Churchill who starved 4 million people in Bengal Famine, among his other atrocities in Europe, is labelled as a hero? In fact, not only Churchill is being celebrated as a war hero and the greatest Briton of all time, as the 20th century ended he was also rewarded the honor of “the man of the century.”

Meanwhile, as Buchanan remarks, “[a]sked how he could ally with Stalin, whose crimes he knew so well, Churchill answered “that he had only one single purpose—the destruction of Hitler—and his life was much simplified thereby. If Hitler invaded Hell, he would at least have made a favourable reference to the Devil. Yet in his Ahab-like pursuit of Hitler “at all cost,” did Churchill ever reckon the cost of a war to the death—for Britain, the empire, and Europe? For as the war went on for five years after Dunkirk, those costs—financial, strategic, moral—mounted astronomically.” And Britain’s mighty empire crumbled because of that. This, is the main argument of this book.

So perhaps that common saying is not true after all, that Germany is NOT always on the wrong side of history. They only lost the wars and thus being put as the scapegoat for ALL the damages, in the history written by the winners (mainly Britain and the US). Conversely, if we take a look at the history of warfares and coups and conflicts, we would easily see that Britain and the US are behind almost every single atrocities in modern history, either directly or indirectly. Including, arguably, opting out of peace negotiations and instead provoking Hitler into war.

With this in mind, it is like that Mitchell and Webb comedy sketch where a Nazi soldier just realised that what they’re doing is a war crime, and proceeded to ask his friend “Hans, are we the baddies?” Only this time it’s the other way around. This book is making us realized that there are no good guys, and that the allied powers are also as (if not more) guilty as the Nazis.

“A Grief Observed” by C. S. Lewis

How can a benevolent God cause you so much suffering and death? This was the question asked by a devout Christian C. S. Lewis when his beloved wife passed away, leaving him with so much grief.

Lewis married his wife Helen Joy Davidman (referred in the book as simply “H”) when he was already 60 and have long become a celebrated writer as well as the famous don of Oxford. Helen was an extraordinary woman, with intelligence and accomplishments that can match his level, which instantly sparked a connection between them since they first met. In fact, the story of how they met was incredible. Their marriage lasted only a decade long, however, after she sadly passed away due to bone cancer. And it ruined Lewis and prompted him to question why did God took her away after only a very brief period of happiness following a lifetime of being a bachellor?

But instead of abandoning his faith, he decided to write a book about this doubt and torment. This book. And the journey was profound.

We can see early on in the book that he is hurting, confused and feel the sense of lost: “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid”, Lewis then continues, “I dread the moments when the house is empty.”

He also hate the way he was grieving, when he said “on the rebound one passes into tears and pathos. Maudlin tears. I almost prefer the moments of agony. These are at least clean and honest. But the bath of self-pity, the wallow, the loathsome sticky-sweet pleasure of indulging it – that disgust me.”

He then went to a depression stage: “And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job—where the machine seems to run on much as usual—I loathe the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much. Even shaving. What does it matter now whether my cheek is rough or smooth? They say an unhappy man wants distractions—something to take him out of himself.”

And starting to question about God’s absence during his darkest period: “But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?”

And he was angry: “I’m not in danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is coming to believe such dreadful things about Him.”

He then became bitter: “To some I’m worse than an embarrassment. I am a death’s head. Whenever I meet a happily married pair I can feel them both thinking. ‘One or other of us must some day be as he is now.’”

And traumatized: “At first I was very afraid of going to places where H. and I had been happy—our favourite pub, our favourite wood. But I decided to do it at once—like sending a pilot up again as soon as possible after he’s had a crash.”

But he then realized that “Unexpectedly, it makes no difference. Her absence is no more emphatic in those places than anywhere else.” And the fact that “The act of living is different all through. Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”

But he still missing her some more, when he said “It is incredible how much happiness, even how much gaiety, we sometimes had together after all hope was gone. How long, how tranquilly, how nourishingly, we talked together that last night!” And when he said “I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get. The old life, the jokes, the drinks, the arguments, the love-making, the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace.”

At some point in the book, he even began to question about his wife’s happiness in the afterlife: “‘Because she is in God’s hands.’ But if so, she was in God’s hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body? And if so, why?”

But then, he started to see the light at the end of the tunnel: “Bridge-players tell me that there must be some money on the game ‘or else people won’t take it seriously’. Apparently it’s like that. Your bid—for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity—will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high; until you find that you are playing not for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world.”

And he applied it to his own situation: “Why has no one told me these things? How easily I might have misjudged another man in the same situation? I might have said, ‘He’s got over it. He’s forgotten his wife,’ when the truth was, ‘He remembers her better because he has partly got over it.’”

And began to slowly heal: “You can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately: anyway, you can’t get the best out of it.”

And able to philosophize his experience: “I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense. It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought, feeling after feeling, action after action, had H. for their object. Now their target is gone. I keep on through habit fitting an arrow to the string; then I remember and have to lay the bow down. So many roads lead thought to H. I set out on one of them. But now there’s an impassable frontier-post across it. So many roads once; now so many culs de sac.”

And able to revisit his grief: “And then one or other dies. And we think of this as love cut short; like a dance stopped in mid career or a flower with its head unluckily snapped off—something truncated and therefore, lacking its due shape. I wonder. If, as I can’t help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of their purgatorial sufferings), then for both lovers, and for all pairs of lovers without exception, bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love.”

He also started to see God from a different light: “Looking back, I see that only a very little time ago I was greatly concerned about my memory of H. and how false it might become. For some reason—the merciful good sense of God is the only one I can think of—I have stopped bothering about that. And the remarkable thing is that since I stopped bothering about it, she seems to meet me everywhere. Meet is far too strong a word. I don’t mean anything remotely like an apparition or a voice. I don’t mean even any strikingly emotional experience at any particular moment. Rather, a sort of unobtrusive but massive sense that she is, just as much as ever, a fact to be taken into account.”

Despite still having some doubts for the future: “For this fate would seem to me the worst of all; to reach a state in which my years of love and marriage should appear in retrospect a charming episode—like a holiday—that had briefly interrupted my interminable life and returned me to normal, unchanged.”

And still can’t help for feeling the grief: “Did you ever know, dear, how much you took away with you when you left? You have stripped me even of my past, even of the things we never shared. I was wrong to say the stump was recovering from the pain of the amputation. I was deceived because it has so many ways to hurt me that I discover them only one by one.”

Only this time is different. As Lewis remarks, “the greater the love, the greater the grief.”

In this, he has accepted the lost of his wife as a price to pay for loving her, a price very much worth paying. Because it is better to have loved and lost (however brief it was) than never experience them at all.

With this regards, Lewis realized that the key is not to avoid the inevitable suffering, but to embrace it as a part of the love you get to experience beforehand. A greater and better life that you can have if you have the courage to love (and bare the loss later on). And this, Lewis eventually realized, is what God intended for him all along.

“In the Penal Colony” by Franz Kafka

This is a story about a particular execution device in a penal colony located in an unnamed island. It is a brilliantly-written conversation between a visiting Traveler and the Officer of the colony, which describes the mechanism of the torture device in details.

The device was created by an Old Commander, whom the Officer is a devout follower. But after the Old Commander’s death the device had fallen out of favour by the new Commander due to its cruelty. Hence, the presence of the Traveler whose role was never explained but I suspect to be some kind of an overseas auditor or consultant, due to his nature that examines the device from a detached position.

It is a pretty simple short narrative, but like any other Kafka’s masterpieces the story has larger meanings behind it. It is analogous with the concept of a governmental “machine” that abuses its power and executes innocent citizens with impunity. It is also a conversation about morality, which is projected by the shock and disbelieve of the Traveler and his dilemma between paying respect to how things have always been done, no matter how wrong it is, or speaking up against it.

The Officer’s blind allegiance to the Old Commander is also telling, where the Officer can only sees the inherited device that his former boss created and the task-in-hand to operate it, without looking at the humanity of the victims. And at the end of the story it even revealed that he believes in a prophecy that the Old Commander could bizarrely rise from the dead, which is why the Officer is fighting for the device to be preserved for the Old Commander’s second coming.

All in all, the story explores the themes of injustice and the justification for brutal punishment, a familiar Kafkaesque environment. But the difference with this story is in this one the crime of the Condemned Man is clearly described, although a very minor one (a soldier must stand up for 12 hours in guarding a door and saluting the Commander but he fell asleep), which is not at all worthy of a torturous death.

It is yet another Kafka classic, which this time sees injustice from the vantage point of the executioner, who is conducting the whole atrocities by focusing only on glorifying the device and nothing else.