BOOK REVIEW-FIVE STARS
Murderers In Mausoleums: Riding the Back Roads of Empire Between Moscow and Beijing by Jeffrey Tayler
Murderers In Mausoleums: Riding the Back Roads of Empire Between Moscow and Beijing is another great true story from Jeffrey Tayler with cutting edge comparative analysis that cuts to the bone with shocking truthfulness. This eyeopener is very well done and a recommended read.
EXCERPTS;
A Russian Orthodox priest might replace “Islam” and “sharia” with “Christianity” and “the Ten Commandments” and deliver much the same (anti-Western) discourse in church up north. Resentment of the West now amounts to an ecumenical faith across Russia.
We hate Bush here. We’re all against Bush and the war in Iraq. You don’t know what you’ve got yourselves into.”
“You can see on Bush’s face that he’s a bad person, bad. He’s not worthy of sitting here with us to drink a beer.”
“September eleventh was a visitation from the Almighty. God gave us the attacks of that day as a lesson to remind us that he exists, that we’re all his children, all children of one god. It’s not just we in Dagestan who live on a powder keg, it’s all humanity now. For the first time, Americans can feel that for themselves.”
“I hear Condoleezza talking about democracy and that retard Bush telling us how to live, and I say, ‘America, shove your democracy up your ass and stop lecturing us!’ You meddle in other countries and fuck them up and then scold us about human rights. Shove it! I once thought Americans were a great people. But what kind of great people elects a fucking retard twice as president? You c’n tell by the look on his face that he’s a moron, a brainless cretin, but you elect him anyway!”
In Russia, where strength and cleverness are revered above all else, they mattered. Disdain for an America perceived as weak and stupid would embolden Putin in his confrontation with the West.
“Russia is getting stronger, Russia is rising, and you’re just going to have to get used to it.” She sneered. “We’ve got thousands of clever people in this country, brilliant people, scientists and schemers, and make no mistake about it: they’re out-and-out bastards. We live like shit, sure, but we don’t give a damn. Like it or not, we’re getting stronger, and we’re no fucking pansies. The Yeltsin days are over. We’re not taking any more orders from Bush or anyone else.” This kind of talk wasn’t entirely untrue. Russia’s Hobbesian human jungles hone ruthless talents of survival, and its poverty anneals the masses to discomfort; whereas Westerners, or so Russians think, are spoiled, fragile, and spineless. A predatory government forces Russians to develop tactics of evasion and subterfuge, while Westerners indulge their fancies in law-bound societies that permit frivolous pursuits and childish dissent.
Once in power Mao launched Soviet-style “reforms” that led to Soviet-style death and misery but on a Chinese scale—the collectivization of agriculture, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution... Millions died in purges and famines before his death in 1976. Outdoing Stalin, he became the greatest mass murderer of the twentieth century. Yet his admirers—and even judging solely by this crowd, there are legions—laud him for ousting foreign occupiers, unifying China, and, for the first time in centuries, putting their country on a par with other world powers. That crowds throng to his embalmed body even now tells us that the future of this country probably does not belong to liberal reformers, that not all people march when freedom calls, that atrocities can be suffered and forgotten, and that justice is a malleable concept.
Ten or fifteen years ago no one expected such authoritarian capitalism would arise, but it is now strengthening by the day, carried forth on the shoulders of a compliant citizenry. Russia and China are working toward a rapprochement. Whether they succeed remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: the new Great Game that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union has ended, and victory has gone to the home teams.
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