This planet is comprised of hundreds of countries, few of which university graduates can name or their professors find on the map. Asked why, they’ll say because they aren’t important. Maybe they popped up in history, but then sank back into obscurity. Every continent has them. Poor buggers.
In Europe’s Shadow by Robert D. Kaplan
Still, they do exist — for centuries, if not millennia. Their populations in the millions. Maybe, just maybe there’s something interesting about them. The landscape. The quaintness of the inhabitants. Their place in the scheme of things. What’s the harm in checking them out?
Romania titillated the curiosity of Robert D.Kaplan. An Israeli-American journalist he went there and wrote a memoir-travel journal about his trip up, down and around the country. It was during the 1970s, the midst of the Cold War, when the Communists ruled the land.
In the US, Eastern Europe became his field of expertise. The archives were so contradictory that much of his time was spent comparing sources, as each ancient and medieval historian had an axe to grind. Revisiting Romania, the adjacent lands and the Balkans, he traced ever-changing boundaries.
In Europe’s Shadow is his 17th and most recent work with an extensive bibliography, index, a section of paintings and photographs. Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler, aka Vlad Dracula, is given pride of place. Though not a bloodsucker, he was Bram Stoker’s role model. FYI, Transylvania kept changing between Romanian and Hungarian sovereignty.
Romania had some heroic leaders, but invariably lost its wars. Situated between the Black Sea it was overrun by one barbarian tribe after another. Rome ruled it, as did Byzantium and the Ottoman Turks, Greek Orthodix the religion. Parts of it kept being split, then reunited.
It joined the Allies in World War I, Nazi Germany in World War II. Then Soviet Russia was its master for 44 years. The author details how Romania fared under each. Specialising in geopolitics, Kaplan is critically acknowledged to be one of the major global thinkers. Though not a fortune-teller, his view of the future isn’t peaceful one.
As he sees it, whether Tsarist, Communist or pseudo-Democratic, Russia intends to be the unrivalled world power. Putin is making his first move toward this end in Ukraine, others will follow and so on. Arguably overlooked or ignored is the current “reverse Crusade”.
Lives laid bare
Back in the day when I was covering the nightlife in the City of Angels, a publican told me that the previous night his strongbox had been broken open and its money stolen. “Clearly an inside job,” he said. He’d quizzed his staff. Male and female. All swore ignorance of the crime.
Truth or Die by James Patterson & Howard Roughan
What good would calling the police do? “I have an idea,” he said. Curious, I kept in touch. He had a friend, retired to the Philippines, who had specialised in administering polygraph tests and still had his lie-detector. He agreed to come over with it, mainly wires and such.
The employees were connected to it in turn and asked the relevant questions. Suffice to say that two lovers failed. The cash was returned and they were dismissed. Word got around and they weren’t hired anywhere else, at least not in Bangkok. I saw the test in use in movies, as well as injected truth drugs.
I’ve read that well-trained spies have been able to “beat” both. And that scientists in both hemispheres are feverishly improving their truth serums, such as getting terrorists to talk without employing waterboarding. Jame Patterson and Howard Roughan focus on this in Truth Or Die.
It opens with the murder (made to look like a robbery gone wrong) of New York Times investigative journalist Valerie Parker. Lawyer Trevor Mann doesn’t buy the simpler cause of the death of his lover and proceeds to investigate on his own. Enter boy genius Owen Lewis, whom she was about to interview.
The plot expands to include the CIA, FBI impersonators, the White House. Somebody way up high — not the President — is ordering killings of those connected with the advanced truth serum, hiding behind the cloak of national security. He confesses when the truth serum is used on him.
The authors make a case for not classifying everything black or white. Indeed grey is the predominant colour. A person who launders money deserves a lighter sentence if he donates the money to charity. The mitigating circumstances of police on the take is that they don’t earn enough to support their family.
We all have skeletons in our closet, and they are no one’s business but our own. It’s an awful thought that a truth serum can induce us to reveal those secrets.
This source first appeared on Bangkok Post Lifestyle.