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Showing posts with the label portugal

Poison is Better - a Review of Two Books

“Telepneva and Williams both trace with regret the arc of movements that started off calling for freedom and self-determination but ended up running neocolonial or authoritarian regimes. Williams’s portrayal of Lumumba and Nkrumah is hagiographic at times, but she also offers an alternative story of national liberation, told from the perspective of ‘minor’ characters, including Thomas Kanza (Lumumba’s ambassador to the  UN ) and Nkrumah’s secretary, Erica Powell. What emerges from these testimonies is not a picture of tragedy, romance or against-the-odds heroism, but a sober assessment of the tough and sometimes impossible choices facing left-wing anti-colonial activists who were under pressure from foreign enemies and foreign allies alike. ‘For better or worse,’ Telepneva concludes, ‘the Africans in this story were agents of their own liberation,’ however brief it turned out to be.” Africa’s cold war

Portugal

"The global press have been equally delighted, but with some of the warmest praise gushing from those bastions of “enlightened capitalism”  The Economist  and  The Financial Times , radical progressives may wish to zoom in yet closer on what has been happening on the ground in Portugal." Not different from other European "socialist" parties. When the bastions of "enlightened capitalism" praise such parties, it doesn't mean they are wrong; it means there is something really wrong with those parties which are trying to satisfy both the EU capital and their rank and file whereas in fact neglecting the latter. Europe's magician of the left?