Kaz Augustin – Page 2

Brett Kavanaugh: It’s Kozinski, stupid*

USian politics has become such an interesting quagmire (why should their military have all the fun?) that you can barely look away before things change. With this in mind, let’s talk about Brett Kavanaugh, a judge on the US Court of Appeals, DC, nominee to the Supreme Court and current Senate grillee.

It all began on 13 September, when the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dianne Feinstein, forwarded information involving Kavanaugh to federal investigators. As the world found out later, that information consisted of an accusation from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, a professor of psychology at Palo Alto University, and researcher at nearby Stanford University.

As I’m a woman, I know a lot of readers will naturally assume that I’m going to side with Dr. Ford but, in fact, I find reprehensible actions on the part of both Democratic and Republican partisans.

Lula Arrested: How Successful a Coup (Wallerstein Commentary #471)

Please consider this a public service. Immanuel Wallerstein’s fortnightly commentaries are available on a listserv that not very many people know about. Their header information says:

Please do not reply to the listserv. To correspond with the author, write immanuel.wallerstein@yale.edu. To correspond with us about your email address on the listserv, writefbcofc@binghamton.edu. Thank you.

I signed myself up for the list so many years ago that I can’t remember how I did it. See what a terrible Anti-Semite I am? 😉

On April 7, 2018 in Brazil Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva was arrested and taken to prison in Curitiba to begin a twelve-year sentence. He was Brazil’s president from October 2002 to January 2011. He was so popular that when he left office in 2011, he had a 90% approval rate.

Conspicuous by its Absence: “Inglorious Empire” by Shashi Tharoor

NOTE: It appears that Shashi Tharoor has made mid-April 2018 headlines regarding his wife’s death back in January 2014 and his recent arrest regarding such. The fact that I am writing a review of his book INGLORIOUS EMPIRE at the same time is nothing more than happenstance, although it does make one wonder at the Universe’s sense of humour.

INGLORIOUS EMPIRE (subtitled “What the British Did to India”) is a book that has long been wanting in the sphere of post-British colonialist non-fiction. And you’ll see why I say “British” as opposed to mere anti-colonialism later. In page after page, INGLORIOUS EMPIRE excoriates the British for their deliberate neglect and plundering of India during two centuries of corporate and later imperial domination. The text is heart-rending and infuriating in its examples and copious references and lays bare the unmistakable hubris and arrogance of many British as they plundered and pillaged a great power with utter greed. On p 175 of INGLORIOUS EMPIRE, Tharoor quotes the start of Alex von Tunzelmann’s book INDIAN SUMMER: The Secret History of the End of an Empire and it nicely illustrates the tone of his book: