The author was interviewed by the award-winning novelist Michael Magee. A portion of the proceeds were given to the worthwhile cause, MAP (Medical Aid for Palestine).
Apologies for anything factually incorrect below. I am going by my memory of tonight's event and not a recording or notes so I'm perhaps not telling it right at all. I also haven't read the book yet. This piece is heavy on paraphrasing and my own thoughts thrown in. So be warned.
There were so many profound, thought-provoking ideas from the author I was getting lost. It was a little like listening to a complicated radio show in another language, not knowing a word, thinking about it briefly, working the word out and then finding you've lost the track of the conversation.
He gave an interesting back story on his work as an journalist. He reported on Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay military trials, the Egyptian Arab Spring, and Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson.
He used to be a tech correspondent as well and he said the only thing that mattered was Amazon Corporation's quarterly profits and that they must be higher than the same quarter the year before. Which is another story but interwoven in the anti-social fabric of today's neoliberal world where the middle ground is the problem.
He made a convincing argument for replacing the current geo-political system, arguing that it is destroying the planet. It's a world where billionaires are accommodated but nobody else. The system of international law has broken down and it has directly led to a genocide where no-one intervenes.
A Palestinian lady from Gaza asked the first question. She spoke for a few moments and explained how, when her father told her (when she was safe in a Western country) that she was the last of their bloodline, she didn't feel sad but a kind of warm feeling knowing the importance and purpose of that. It was immediately shocking because I knew that this was not only the truth and a natural feeling it was something I would never have considered because of my comfortable life here.
The author spoke a lot about the middle ground and of turning a blind eye, and how it is in many ways worse than the vocally pro-genocide person. The people looking the other way are dishonest, like a smiling assassin I suppose. He gave the example of Ed Sheeran, and it confirmed the criticism he got from others. The 'nothing to do with me' attitude.
Apologies for anything factually incorrect below. I am going by my memory of tonight's event and not a recording or notes so I'm perhaps not telling it right at all. I also haven't read the book yet. This piece is heavy on paraphrasing and my own thoughts thrown in. So be warned.
There were so many profound, thought-provoking ideas from the author I was getting lost. It was a little like listening to a complicated radio show in another language, not knowing a word, thinking about it briefly, working the word out and then finding you've lost the track of the conversation.
He gave an interesting back story on his work as an journalist. He reported on Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay military trials, the Egyptian Arab Spring, and Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson.
He used to be a tech correspondent as well and he said the only thing that mattered was Amazon Corporation's quarterly profits and that they must be higher than the same quarter the year before. Which is another story but interwoven in the anti-social fabric of today's neoliberal world where the middle ground is the problem.
He made a convincing argument for replacing the current geo-political system, arguing that it is destroying the planet. It's a world where billionaires are accommodated but nobody else. The system of international law has broken down and it has directly led to a genocide where no-one intervenes.
A Palestinian lady from Gaza asked the first question. She spoke for a few moments and explained how, when her father told her (when she was safe in a Western country) that she was the last of their bloodline, she didn't feel sad but a kind of warm feeling knowing the importance and purpose of that. It was immediately shocking because I knew that this was not only the truth and a natural feeling it was something I would never have considered because of my comfortable life here.
The author spoke a lot about the middle ground and of turning a blind eye, and how it is in many ways worse than the vocally pro-genocide person. The people looking the other way are dishonest, like a smiling assassin I suppose. He gave the example of Ed Sheeran, and it confirmed the criticism he got from others. The 'nothing to do with me' attitude.
He said the honesty of Trump, not mentioning human rights on his state visits to Saudi Arabia, compared to Biden's insincere forked tongue when he gave short speeches on the subject, was in many ways better as you knew what you were dealing with.
He was asked about armed resistance and he said that he was a pacifist but not a committed one, as his tax dollars pay for the genocide yet he still pays his taxes to avoid going to jail. He said he can't tell people who are suffering how to resist and he said if half his extended family were wiped out he really doesn't know how he'd react. Some people, he said ,internalise and others fight back.
He was also asked if he had hope, and he said he often gets asked that. He went on to explain that if the people getting slaughtered in the ongoing genocide still have hope, who the fuck is he to say he doesn't have any?
He talked about the invisible people, the people from South and South-East Asia who work in places like Qatar. who are brought over to work in a system a little above people smuggling. The disenfranchised. They are promised more money than they make at home and when they arrived find it is less than promised - those who died every day when the stadiums were being built for the World Cup.
He gave an analogy of a house where there are termites gnawing away in the basement and the majority are at ground level with the billionaires in the master bedroom. If you look out the window and see other people building a different house, but they don't have strong carpentry skills but there's no termites in the basement what would you do?
⏩ Simon Smyth is an avid reader and collector of books.
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