Who Lost Russia? by Peter Conradi, Oneworld Publications 2017 (revised 2022) - The question at the heart of Conradi’s book is how Russia went from the collapse of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, through a disastrous attempt at becoming a western style ‘free market’ economy under Yelstin to the rise of Putin and his war …
Month: January 2024
THE PROMISE
The Promise is a 2016 film directed and written by Terry George from an unproduced screenplay by Robin Swicord - While we generally view films as a commercial endeavor, ‘The Promise’ was created as a vehicle to raise awareness about the genocide of the Aremenian people by the Ottoman Empire in 1915 - something the …
Van der Valk
Van der Valk - a 2020 UK PBS ‘Mystery’ presentation. For those with a fondness for murder and mayhem on television, the ‘Van der Valk’ series might be just the thing. This is a remake of an earlier ‘Van der Valk’ series produced in Britain by ITV (it ran for several consecutive years starting in …
THE GREATEST CONSPIRACY
‘Reality becomes a matter of PR techniques’. This pithy statement wasn’t found in a current political article, although one could be forgiven if you thought so. The quote comes from an article entitled ‘Flaks’ in the January, 1987 issue of Playboy written by Alexander and Andrew Cockburn. ‘Flaks’ is the name they gave to public …
Richard's Left Bank 