Category: Foreign Affairs
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Take Off Happens
Late lunch when Jack leaves early and gets th’ job done. 03:25 wake up 03:50 pick up 04:50 boarding 05:20 liftoff Mumbai 07:25 touchdown Delhi 08:35 report for duty 09:00 call to order 13:00 adjourn 14:00 reach ile bar T1 Take-off happens ##
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Jon Voight’s IOU
Well, gee, is anyone surprised by Jon Voight’s absurd words of support addressed to the people of the Republican Party? Is anyone surprised to see the actor who portrayed Milo Minderbinder, Joseph Heller’s brilliant rendering of a profiteering con artist in Catch-22, praise the most notorious and corrupt corporate scoundrel America has ever produced? Sure,…
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A Trail in Two Countries
Years ago I traveled the sands of Saudi Arabia, stopping along the way to tour the old camel train forts. I visited these caravanserai along the Hejaz Railway, the line targeted by T.E. Lawrence and the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. My journeys between 2003-05 took me north from Jeddah through…
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Operation Sheltering Sky
Rajasthan is desert country, 70% of the state—India’s largest—an arid mix of scrub and sand. We trekked by camel into the Thar Desert about 50 km outside Jaisalmer. Abdullah led our beasts on foot, their names Simon, Paulos, and—inexplicably—Johnny No. 1. Toward sunset we reached the Sam Dunes. The wind died down and we made…
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“The Whites…”
An ugly and violent upward trend divides us along ethnic lines today. In order to stay sane in the face of this spreading and dangerous hate, one need only look to Walter Sobchak, the right-wing nut job Vietnam vet (and convert to Judaism!) from The Big Lebowski… His utter disdain for his own dirty underwear…
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Maneater
This review just slays it. Jason Overdorf hunts with a sharp pen and takes down Dane Huckelbridge’s narrative about what would seem a brutally interesting topic. And he doesn’t stop there. He spills ink like blood all over the slain author’s enablers: “He is not without accomplices in this crime against the English language, either.…
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Lords of the Flies
We boys are to be left alone while the lynchpin of our home operation conducts child labor research in island-nation Philippines for the next seven days. The irony’s not lost on me. How long ’til we descend into savagery? Not to worry. Rather than cranking the inevitable conflagrant sounds we so admire, we’ll tuck ourselves…
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Death Star
We call this project the Death Star. The Death Star is going up across from my flat. Just outside our bedroom window, as a matter of fact. Here’s an eyewitness account of how they build the Death Star: After fielding an unusual duty call at midnight last night, I returned to bed at 01:00, badly…
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Mending Wall
Robert Frost’s great poem, outwardly a critique on a pre-existing wall, arguably has little to do with the hypothetical wall being proffered today. But Frost’s wall stands for so much more, and the critique applies more universally than merely to stone piled on stone. The critique can be said to include any barrier that divides…
Ben East Books 