The Myth of Capitalism - Jonathan Tepper

 A book that take down the myth of the American capitalist system as a system of competition and constant renewal.  He outlines how the actual American economy has become both monopolistic and monopsonistic with a small number of companies controlling huge areas of the economy, setting prices, wages and even what suppliers will be paid.  Innovation and new company creation are steadily slowing.  Smaller firms are more and more swallowed up by a few big ones.  The end result is lower wages for everyone, the disappearance of family farms and businesses and higher prices for everyone too.  This is actually the driving force behind growing income inequality:  wages shrink, prices go up, large corporations and big share holders grab more and more of the wealth. 

Since slavery the basic American economic model has been highly exploitative.  Then came colonialism/imperialism on the world stage.  Now they are back consuming their own people to get rich.  

Nothing is done because money runs politics.  Congress works for the wealthy shareholders and corporations by granting monopolies, increasing regulation that makes it harder for small companies to get started and changing laws that benefit large companies and the wealthy.  He underlines the importance of how government advisors and top administrators move back and forth between the private and public sector.  

This problem is particularly important in the U.S.  Canada and Europe are far more stringent in applying anti-trust and anti-monopoly rules.  The U. S. has given up on this.  

This book explains why Google and other large tech companies have been having legal problems and being fined large sums of money in Europe whereas nothing is happening in the U.S.  

Worth rereading for the details,

Circe - Madeline Miller

 An excellent story based on Greek mythology.  Most of the characters come from Greek mythology or Homer.  She brings real human insight to both the ancient stories and the characters she works with.  It is a novel about vanity, about finding one's own identity, about mortality and death.  It also has things to say about some modern issues - our worship of fame, power and celebrity culture; the self-centred, self-indulgent life, our desire for everything to come easily.  

This is the first book where I actually feel Greek mythology has come alive.  She uses the characters from mythology but she bends them around the meaningful story and themes she wants to write about.  

Il Treno dei bambini - Viola Ardone

 Libro eccellente che racconta la storia vera di un gruppo di bambini da Napoli mandato a Bologna durante l'inverno dopo la guerra per togliergli della povertà e della fame.  E la storia di chi vive senza un senso chiaro d'identità tra due mondi.  Il personnaggio principale scopre un mondo diverso quando vive colla famiglia a Bologna e non può piu tornare alla vita stretta e dura della sua madre a Napoli.  Lei anche lo respinge nel senso che non può accettare quel nuovo mondo che il suo bambino ha scoperto.  In quel senso è anche un libro su come la gente  può tenersi prigioniero nel sua propria vita e idee.  

Una storia emotiva ma non eccessivamente - va bene con il tema dei bambini.  

The Scarlet Gospels - Clive Barker

 A disappointing read.  His best work seems to have been the Abarat Trilogy.  Characters are stereotypical and lack convincing depth.  The action is repetitive in its graphic description of endless gory violence.  The storyline has potential, some creativity but the stylistic weaknesses undermine it too much.  

Steps - Jerzy Kosinski

 A collection of short texts with little or no connections.  Like fragments.  You can see the themes I saw in the film version of his book, Painted Birds - sadistic violence, violent sex, anger and resentment,  revenge.  He writes well but the whole things seems like voyeurism or thrill seeking by the comfortable and well-off.  Jean Genet, on the other hand, is the real thing (though his popularity is this same kind of voyeurism on the part of his readers).

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe

 A reread from long ago.  A portrait of a lost era that quickly disappeared into the maw of commercialization of everything.  Kesey was a strange character - a bit of a prophet with a vision of a society with a freer, more open mind.  It is interesting that his later message was to move beyond acid and the other drugs, to find that open mind state without the drugs.  Of course, this message fell flat.  For most the attraction was the thrill.  

Also, always the same old things:  leader worship, in crowd and out crowd, conformity pressure.  The alternative vision that mirrors the same old same old....

Sadly, ultimately, the whole thing ended rather seedily - hiding from the law, seamy Mexico, in-fighting, even a bit of megalomania and paranoia.  A failed prophecy and a failed prophet.  

Wind/Pinball - Haruki Murakami

 Two of Murakami's first works, both novellas.  Interesting from a development perspective.  One of them (I forget which) is basically an autobiographical piece about his life right around when he decided to write novels, and also an explanation of the completely random way in which he decided to become a writer, and his first steps in finding his own particular style (turns out he first started to try writing in English and liked the simplified, pared down result, which he then translated into a writing technique in Japanese)

The WEIRDEST People in the World - Joseph Henrich

 A potentially fascinating book exploring the psychological and conceptual differences between the Western European psyche and culture and that of the rest of the world, and how this helps explain the rise and dominance of the West.  He looks at all kinds of things - individualism vs. social and familial integration,  social cohesion vs. individual perception and judgement, the locus of causality and guilt, and many others.

One interesting point that he makes is how the Catholic Church revolutionized social relations in the West by forbidding cousin marriage, thereby forcing people to reach out beyond their immediate familial circles to develop a wider web of relations.

Unfortunately, the book delves into the background, research and experiments a bit too deeply and it begins to drag.  I would like to read a version with the main themes and conclusions and a simple summary of the background related to each.  Because of this quality, I couldn't finish the book.

Try again, reading only the beginning and end of each section for the main points and themes.

Even the Dead - Benjamin Black

 As per usual

The Night Manager - John LeCarre

 Another great book.  This time the focus is the international trade in illegal weapons and its links to the narco-mafia of Central and South America and also to the big banks of Europe and the U. S.

Holy Orders - Benjamin Black

 Same "forces of evil".  Same good guys...

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Haruki Murakami

 Fairly straight-forward plot - an early life trauma, its effects and the final quest to untie the knots.  Perhaps a look at how great a distance there can be between our memory or image of reality and the actual reality itself.

Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami

 An earlier book by Murakami.  Like all his books, the plot is continually unraveling out in left field somewhere.   A mix of daily grit and occult with some parallels to Greek mythology thrown in - Hades, trips to the land of death.  The characters are unusual well- developed.  Especially the old man, Nakata, grows on you - in his mental simplicity, he has almost a Zen character.   The nominal theme would seem to be about the search for identity and the sense of self, but there are other threads - nature of time and death, the act of reading, the shallowness of most social constructs we live by.  

Worth a reread.

A Death in Summer - Benjamin Black

 Much the same

The Lemur - Benjamin Black

Like all of Black's books, not bad.  Evokes an older Dublin.  Some Irish social criticism, but always the same - corrupt church in league with corrupt politicians and criminal gangs.  It is like the same book over and over with subtle plot changes.  Rankin's work is far more varied, and his characters are much more complex. 

However, they do pass the time. 

Elegy for April - Benjamin Black

 As usual.

I racconti di Nene - Andrea Camilleri

 Un libro di ricordi di Camilleri.  Divertente.  Da uno sguardo a diversi lati della vita di ogni giorni, alla politica e anche al mondo artistico dell'Italia della sua epoca.

Gli Zii di Sicilia - Leonardo Sciascia

 Quello che comincia come romanzo divertente si sposta lentamente in critica sociale di diversi aspetti della società siciliana.  Ci sono osservazione critiche sopra il ruolo della chiesa, del governo, della società sempre dominata di famiglie ricche e come continuano a sfruttare il piccolo popolo.  C'è anche uno sguardo al fascismo e l'oppressione politica nell'era del fascismo.  Ma per me, il più interessante e lo sguardo critico ai valori sociali della società americana, esposto attraverso la visita della zia che abita da anni in America - materialismo e soldi davanti a tutto.  Era un tema nella letteratura italiana di dopo guerra.   Si può vederlo per esempio, anche nel film di Fellini su i suoi primi anni a Roma, sotto l'aspetto della scomparsa della vita comunale e di quartiere negli anni 50 e 60.

Todo Modo - Leonardo Sciascia

 Corto romanzo di tipo critica sociale.  Esamina il rapporto corrotto tra la Chiesa, il mondo degli affari e delle grande imprese, e del governo sociale cristiano.  Da un certo punto di vista, espone il tentativo della Chiesa, ora forza metà spenta, di ritenere il possibile della sua importanza e del suo potere.

Interessante come documento sociale di un certo periodo storico.

Conversazione in Sicilia - Elio Vittorini

 Il romanzo classico di Vittorini.  Bella storia del ritorno alla Sicilia dopo anni d'assenza.  Ha elementi surreale e anche molto concreti e realistici.  L'avevo letto molti anni fa, ma questa volta ho notato più chiaramente gli elementi politici ed antifascisti nel romanzo.  Ero anche impressionato dall'umanesimo dell'autore, perfino davanti ai due fascisti che incontra durante il suo viaggio in treno.  Abbastanza facile di lettura, e di un'apparente semplicità, ma con bellissime imagine ed intrecci di temi. 

Certo vale la pena di rileggerlo più di una volta.

The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire - Robert Bickers

 An account of the humiliation and exploitation of China in the late 1800s by England and America.

Goes a long way to explaining the current determination of the Chinese government to build a strong system of central control, project a strong presence in the world and to build a system of links and allies, and to remain at the crest of new technology, both civilian and military.  The current leaders have learned their lessons from history...

Riccardino - Andrea Camilleri

 L'ultimo libro di Camilleri e anche della serie Montalbano.  Camilleri l'avevo scritto molti anni fa, ma insisteva che sarebbe stato pubblicato solo dopo il suo decesso.  Divertente come sempre ma con certi aspetti originali mai visti nei libri di Montalbano.  Il romanzo diventa un po' Pirandellesco nel senso che nel corso del romanzo c'è uno scambio di lettere e di telefonate tra il carattere Montalbano e l'autore Camilleri.  Montalbano è alla volta l'ispirazione per l'autore e anche la sua creazione.  Alla fine Montalbano si cancella letteralmente...

Mi sento un po' deluso che non ci sarà più libri con Montalbano.  

The Uninvited - Tim Wynne-Jones

 Easy read.  Novel set in rural Ontario.  Story of a kid from New York who ends up living in the middle of nowhere.  O.K.

On Pandemics - David Walther-Toews

 A book about the current Covid Virus "pandemic" and how we ended up here.  Lightly written, easy read book with some wit.  There is an undercurrent of mockery or poking fun throughout the book for several reasons.  First, because scientists have been warning about the next pandemic for over a decade now and no one in positions of power was listening.  Second, many of the factors leading to modern pandemics are related to over-exploitation and destruction of natural environments, another problem that scientists have been warning us about for decades without much success.  Third, third world poverty, another much discussed but short on action problem, also encourages the kind  of human-animal interactions that lead to viruses jumping species.  Fourth, this cycle of viruses jumping species is an old cycle, repeated many times throughout history, often resulting from new modes of interaction between humans and the natural environment.

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire - Kurt Andersen

 A great analysis of the roots of the current crazy political, social and ideological climate in the U. S., tracing it all the way back to the founding of the colony in Virginia as a 10 year long gold rush scam designed to attract immigrant suckers.  

The introduction alone is full of astonishing facts about beliefs and mental habits of Americans at large - left my mouth hanging.  One that sticks - by the author's estimation, at best 1/3 of Americans live in a rational, fact-based universe...

The chapters dealing with the 19th and 20th centuries are the most interesting in terms of explaining key moments on the road to the current state of society and critical thinking.  Too many things to discuss...

Worth a reread, especially the second half.

Il cuoco dell'Alcyon - Andrea Camilleri

 Un romanzo basato su le organizzazioni internazionale del mafia.  

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead - Olga Tokarczuk

 Kind of a detective / murder mystery novel.  Really a rant against hunting as a hobby, and against the eating of meat in general.

Great title, but for me the book didn't live up to the title's potential.

Twice a Stranger - Bruce Clark

Subtitled:  How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Turkey.

An excellent account of this whole historical episode.  It gives the background and the historical information in detail, but not too much.  It also includes many personal reminiscences of the experience from older people on both sides of the divide, as well as acute observations from the author made during his travels in both countries.
The end result is a complex picture of a complex set of experiences which tends to counter the more absolute mythology around the expulsions and the events leading up to them. 

One interesting passage can be found on pp. 193 - 195, recounting the political moves of the CHP around the opposition that was critical of the government's corruption and inefficiency in dealing with the population exchange.  In the end, the leaders of the opposition were accused of being disloyal and imprisoned and eventually executed during the aftermath of the Kurdish uprising shortly after the population exchange.  The press was also so suppressed.  The ruling party even maintained they had aborted an assassination attempt on Atatürk   This is, of course, the identical playbook that Erdoğan has used - the Ergenkon case, as well as the whole Fetah Gülen story.  Various aspects of the Turkish managing of the population exchange make it clear that this collusion between the ruling party and the big business elite is built into the DNA of the Turkish Republic.  In a way, it is a continuation of the relationship between the Sultan and the non-Muslim elites of the late Ottoman Empire - a favoured business elite with special rapport with the government and which is allowed to enrich itself in exchange for money and favours...   As usual, nations have a very hard time changing their political DNA;  they just swap round the power brokers and the business elite groups.

The Honourable Schoolboy - John LeCarre

Second novel in the Smiley series.  Set mostly in Hong Kong.  Focus on Cold War games, gun running and the unfolding of the proxy Cold War in various countries in the Far East.

Richmond Now and Then: An Anecdotal History - Nick Fonda

A collection of well-written articles on the history and people of the Richmond, Quebec area.  Covers earliest time up to recent days.  Worth browsing through again.

The Case Against Reality - Donald Hoffmann

An interesting argument that we know nothing of the physical world around us, nor even of ourselves.  Given that our brain (whatever it might be) is a medium that interprets stimuli from the external world, we can know only the interpretations, the filtered image, not the real thing - whatever that may be, and if it is at all possibly knowable given our limitations/filter.  We can't even know that nature of our own filter, because as we study the human brain and body, we are perceiving not some final reality, but a filtered images of our physical selves.
A complex book with a complex idea - but it seems very reasonable.  Worth rereading to understand in greater detail.   It all begins to sound very Buddhist...

Our Game - John LeCarre

An excellent book.  This one based on the unsettled situation post fall of USSR in the Caucasus mountains.  A great portrait of Russia and Moscow at the time.

La casa in collina - Cesare Pavese

     Un libro che tratta soprattutto di Torino e dintorni durante la fine del periodo fascista e anche dopo, quando i tedeschi presero controllo dell'Italia settentrionale.  Mi pare un libro quasi autobiografico - il narratore, personaggio principale, somiglia molto al Pavese raccontato da Natalia Ginzburg nei suoi libri e saggi.
      Ginzburg descrive una persona che rimane fuori di tutto, sopra di tutto, che non vuole immischiarsi nella vita quotidiana.  Questo è lo stato esatto di questa casa del titolo; sopra Torino,  vicino ma a parte.   Dalla casa e dei colline dintorni sorveglia il bombardamento di Torino durante la guerra e si sente fuori di tutto questo.  Il narratore-l'autore rimane fuori di tutto.  Abita con una famiglia, la cui figlia è innamorata di lui, ma non vuole a che fare con lei.  Lui è contro il fascismo,  conosce partigiani di ogni lato politico, ma non vuole entrare nelle loro lotte.  Passa un po' di tempo nascosto in un monastero, dove parla col fratello di Dio e della fede, ma non arriva a credere neanche in Dio.  Questo passaggio è interessante perché il prete parla del prezzo della fede, la necessità di accettare certe cose che possono sembrare difficili, È come se non arriva a credere in niente, anche sgradevole, ma è il prezzo di crederci, di avere una certezza nella vita.  Il narratore non può accettare quel prezzo, ne nella religione, ne nella politica, neanche nell'amore.
       C'è anche in questo romanzo, come in La Luna e i Fallo, un ragazzo un po' dimenticato, un po' patetico, che cresce un po' solo, un po' dimenticato da tutti. Nei due romanzi è il narratore che si mette ad occuparsene.  Questo bambino mi sembra un simbolo in qualche sorte, forse di come Pavese si vede ad un certo livello.  Da un lato, nella sua distanza da tutto, c'è una superbia, una arroganza, ma da un altro lato, c'è un bambino a parte, dimenticato, lasciato troppo solo - insomma, caso triste.

   È interessante notare che Pavese e anche Ginzburg sono scrittori autobiografici ad un certo livello, e nella loro narrazione e, con Ginzburg, nei saggi e libri apertamente autobiografici.  Si raccontano nelle loro scritture.  È molto diverso della letteratura francese della stessa epoca, che era molto più astratta, ideologica. 

Lessico famigliare - Natalia Ginzburg

Strano libro dove non succede molto.  Racconta la verità della sua famiglia - fatti diversi d'ogni giorno da quando era piccola fino a quando va per abitare a Roma.  Presenta il carattere e abitudini di suo padre, di sua madre, e come fanno i giovani della famiglia per scappare a quella struttura.  Il libro è fatto di piccoli dettagli della vita in comune di una famiglia, e anche di un gruppo d'amici.  A certi punti nel libro, parla del periodo quando era sposata con il suo primo marito, la vita che hanno fatti insieme.
Ci sono parecchi bei passaggi che si tratta di Cesare Pavese, amico stretto di famiglia.  Quando si legge quei passaggi comprende perché si e suicidato - è un uomo che non ha mai trovato il posto giusto per inserirsi nella vita quotidiana.  Ginzburg presenta chiaramente il suo isolamento, il suo solitudine fondamentale (tema che è ripresa nel suo proprio libro, La casa in collina).  Quando leggo quei passaggi, e anche il suo proprio libro,  non comprendo perché la gente continua a vedere quel suicidio come atto misterioso. 
Per causa uno dei fratelli all'autore, si vede anche un po' della  politica italiana durante il periodo fascista e anche di dopo guerra, e come ha toccato alle famiglie in modo concreto. 
La famiglia e come un fondo alla sua vita personale, toccato dalla politica, dalla morte, un fondo che in fondo non cambia mai. Il tessuto dei rapporti familiari non cambiano, ma il mondo si...

Once Upon a Time in Europa - John Berger

This book of his peasant trilogy looks at the period when local industrial resource extraction comes to the mountains.  It examines the moment when the younger generation abandons the hard-scrabble farming to move to low-skill industrial work or to low-level service work of the time - sales, markets etc.  You see the despair of the older generation as they age and become incapable of maintaining their small farms and livelihood.  You see the exploitation and hard labour of the unskilled factory workers.  The work is still manual - they have only their body's strength to use to earn a living.  The new work is still precarious; injuries and death happen without consequence or support for the survivors.  You see the loss of traditions and traditional knowledge.  You also see some who adapt in some way and take valued products from the wild to sell in the cities.
There is also an awareness of the environmental degradation resulting from these early, dirty extractive industries, a poisoning of the land and water.

The Success and Failure of Picasso - John Berger

   An interesting analysis of the work of Picasso through the course of his life.
   He makes a number of points around certain ideas.
   He sees Picasso as having been shaped by the feudalistic political and economic system still operating in Spain during his youth with a very different system of values and view of poverty than the one current in industrialized France at the time.  In Spain, there was poverty but one still had dignity, like that of the peasants in Pig Earth.  In industrialized France, poverty was simply a kind of desperation without dignity, a failure.  Berger sees this behind both the subjects and the style of Picasso's Blue period when he first moved to Paris. 
   Berger sees this sense of being an outsider, a "primitive", as critical to Picasso's overall career - a self-image as anarchistic social critic, as a noble savage, as an iconoclast.  Berger sees this as the driving force in much of Picasso's work, rather than the influence of an artist attempting to rework, rethink, expand the form and language of painting (outside the Cubist period, where he worked collaboratively with others on a formalized problem or new conception of the relation between painter/painting and subject).  As Berger puts it, Picasso became focused on the act of painting and creating as a confirmation of his noble savage status, of his social critic status, rather than on the paintings themselves and the more formal or conceptual side of the work.
    I tend to agree with his overall analyses.  Picasso did produce some important, focused, almost revolutionary pieces - Demoiselles, Guernica, post-cubist works too - but while much of his work, especially later in his career, exhibits a great deal of energy in terms of both style and sheer output, the works themselves are not so distinct or noteworthy.

   A victim of his own legend, and also of the one built around him by friends and society. 

Pig Earth - John Berger

    A novel loosely strung together around a group of characters, the last generation of small farm peasants in the mountains of France.  The book's introduction is an essay on what it means to be a peasant, the world view of that way of life.  He does a good job of highlighting how their world and the modern industrial world are so alien to each other.  I find he has done a good job of getting into their shoes.  Especially interesting is the perspective on the place and role of tradition in this peasant society.  The role of continuity of place and also of habitation and family history.

Reread the rest of the series.

Stars of the New Curfew - Ben Okri

A collection of short stories by the writer of "The Famished Road".

Critics talk about how his work is in the tradition of magic realism.  I can see this, in that he brings in a whole world of spirits and demons, visions and magic.  But to me his work seems more a portrait of place where the borders between superstition and a more objective reality are highly blurred, where demons and potions and magic actually form an important part of the fabric of life.  There is also a recurring theme of crowd hysteria leading to injury and death with no regard for the reality of accusations and supposed crimes.  (In current newspapers you can read about this kind of mass hysteria leading to murder and rioting in places like India and Pakistan.)
He paints a picture of Lagos and Nigeria as a place of absolute chaos and corruption, a chaos created deliberately by the political class to enable the corruption.  His portrait of the rest of the society is one of ignorance, anger, frustration, desperation.
An ugly world.

I should reread "Famished Road".

Le tranquille affligé - Gilles Jobidon

    Un écrivain québécois mais aux thèmes très larges.   Un petit livre, très lisible.  Il se déroule en Chine au cours du 19e siècle peu avant la deuxième guerre d'opium en 1850 et la chute de la dynastie Qing.  Il suit qui pourtant ne fait que partie de l'histoire.  L'auteur a aussi fait ses recherches sur la cour impériale et présente de façon vraisemblable des réflections sur la façon de voir et de comprendre le monde courante en Chine à l'époque.
     Un autre côté intéressant du livre est les aperçus qu'offre l'auteur des rapports entre la Chine et l'Occident, c'est à dire l'Angleterre dans le contexte du livre.  Il offre un aperçu des effets de ce commerce forcé d'opium sur la société chinoise.  Il raconte aussi la sac et la destruction du Palais d'été et du jardin impérial par les troupes britanniques.  Il fait mention aussi de la rapacité des forces coloniales en Chine après la chute des Qing.
     Ces aperçus offrent peut-être une explication de la méfiance contemporaine de la Chine envers l'Occident, et aussi de son désir de se rétablir comme un pouvoir important et capable.  Les perdants ont la mémoire longue, chose qu'oublient toujours les gagnants....

    Un sujet à explorer en plus de profondeur.

Le piccole virtù - Natalia Ginzburg

Piccola collezione di saggi in due parti.  La prima parte, che preferisco io, è una collezione di memorie - il suo esilio durante l'epoca fascista, la vita povera a Torino dopo la guerra - e di ritratti di persone importante nella sua vita.   Si trova un ritratto molto toccante di suo amico Cesare Pavese.  Spiega l'importanza di Pavese per i giovani autori, e anche nel ritratto molto personale si vede il carattero e i problemi che l'hanno spinto ad uccidersi.  Per me, è una spiegazione più verosimile di quelli che sono normalmente offerte.
La seconda parte, che non trovò così interessante, è fatto di qualche saggi critici sulla società contemporanea.  Li trovo un po' troppo didattici e moralisti.  Forse sarebbero più interessanti se fossero più brevi e più concentrati. 

Adua- Igiaba Scego

A novel by a Somali-Italian author, translated from the Italian. 
It portrays the life of a Somali woman who moves to Rome to become a film star, but ends up working in the porn field.
What is interesting is the portrait of Italy's engagement with Somalia and the Horn of Africa in the course of the 20th century.  There is a lot of exploitative history there, and historical ugly racism that is explored in the book.  Somalia was Italy's exotic East, same role as the Levant and North Africa played for France and Britain.

Peace and Good Order - Harold R. Johnson

Another wonderfully clear and concise book from this great author.  He has such clarity of thinking and of expression, no meanders, no bullshit.
This book is basically and indictment of the Canadian justice system in relationship to Canada's indigenous people.  Chapter by chapter he outlines the harms, both intentional and unintentional, that the system perpetrates (note:  many of the same things could be said  about the system in relation to white society...).  He also outlines the system bias that basically means even an increase in native lawyers and judges will not change the system itself nor the outcomes.  He also explores the cultural differences that ensure that the dominant system will never work for native communities. 
Johnson, in the case of the treaty for his people, also shows that native communities in fact have the right to maintain order and administer justice on the lands covered by the treaty.  He sees this as a possible solution or way forward.
Johnson also proposes a return to native traditional values and culture, and an education in these as one possible alternative to incarceration.  It seems like a good idea, but one potential weakness in the is that some native people may not want to return to this tradition viewpoint.  To me, it seems there is some kind of inherent conflict or inconsistency in wanting to live by a non-western set of values while at the same time benefiting from or keeping the fruits and products of that set of values - technology, entertainment, daily living enhancements...

Le Chagrin et la pitié - Marcel Ophuls

   Un film sur la France sous l'occupation.  Un film très controversé à sa sortie dans les années '60.   Il paraît que la France a la mythologie qu'en général elle n'a pas trop collaborée avec les Nazis au cours de cette occupation, tandis qu'il semble que la vérité est tout à fait l'opposée.  La collaboration était la politique officielle du gouvernement de Vichy.  Au commencement des hostilités,  le film donne les sens d'une élite française complètement démodée et hors de contact avec la réalité de la situation - perdue dans des illusions d'héroisme et gloire.

   Plein de personnages fascinants, surtout les anciens membres de la Résistance qui s'y sont mis au début du conflit.  Il y a aussi un noble très intéressant qui raconte franchement sa guerre en tant que membre de la Brigade Charlemagne, une brigade française qui faisait partie du Waffen S.S.   Quand on voit tous ces personnages, toutes ces expériences et perspectives diverses, c'est un miracle que la France n'est pas tombée dans un désordre social absolu après la guerre.  C'est peut-être l'accomplissement le plus important de De Gaulle à la fin.

   L'autre chose qui fait rire c'est les cigarettes.  Tout le monde est tout le temps en train de fumer....

White Fragility: Why it's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism - Robin DiAngelo

    A patiently argued book.  As she points out in the book, as a race relations workshop leader, she has faced a lot of angry push-back around these ideas.

    For me, her main idea is that the nature of racism has changed.  Whites are still stuck in the image of racism from the 60s, deliberate acts and attitudes aimed at hurting and excluding people of colour - lynchings, exclusion signs, institutionally separate services.  DiAngelo's point is that the nature of currently troubling racism is much deeper, much more all-pervasive, much harder to pinpoint.  It is what is referred to as systemic racism.  And her idea that causes so much push-back is that, as whites, whether we wish it or not, we all benefit from this systemic racism.  Benefits accrue to us without us even trying.  Therefore we all participate in/benefit from racism.  (I say 'we', which is true, as she points out this white superiority and racism benefits all whites around the world within the context of different societies.  But most of her concrete examples are pulled from the U.S.)
     The type of racism she refers to includes more obvious things like segregation through such means as property prices, where the undesired group is shut out by economics.  This then creates segregation in available services, especially in the area of education quality.  She is also talking about media representation of racial groups and the stereotypes that influence our perception when interacting with members of other racial groups. 
      Notice she is careful to state that whites are also a racialized group, and that some people can hold prejudices and stereotypes that denigrate whites, but the difference is these groups do not have the social position and power to impose their prejudices and stereotypes on us.  They do not control the levers of power that make this racism pay or hurt.

      DiAngelo does not really offer much in the way of solutions.  Speaking up when other whites speak or act insensitively from racial stereotypes.  Raising awareness of one's own racialized stereotypes and ideas as they whisper away in our own heads.

Clifford - Harold R. Johnson

Interesting book.  Interesting mix.  Part childhood memoir, part memorial to his brother, part speculative musings on the structure and nature of the universe.  The reader bounces from life on in an isolated corner of boreal Saskatchewan to the nature of time and black holes.  Woven in are moments of self-criticism, glimpses of what has made this complex man, and asides on the unjust treatment of natives in Canada.  

Kicks off with a quote from one of the characters of Dune...