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Tuesday 23 June 2020

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.