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Saturday, 1 August 2026
Mark Carney's War Bank
Tuesday, 28 July 2026
New book Wild Summers based on Eel Pie Island Dharma
I'm chuffed as we said in the hippie days when I lived in the abandoned hotel on Eel Pie Island. British author Cassie Steward has just published a 500 page novel largely based on the experiences and freeform lifestyle of the residents of the hotel.
My Eel Pie Island Dharma is less than a fifth the length of Cassie's novel. It's a haibun/memoir, and my original intentions were to use the brief chapters as guidelines for a novel. But I came to feel the text worked perfectly as a haibun, and self published it that way in 1990. In 2012 Tai Grove published a far more professional edition with Hidden Brook Press.
I love it that EPID has now been used as the basis of Wild Summers, her fully fleshed out novel. Her main character is a 17 year old girl living in the poshest area of Twickenham. It's a great coming age novel with social outcast Joan Summers discovering herself through visits and friendships with the bohemian inhabitants of the hotel.
This is Cassie standing in the entrance to the Eel Pie Island Museum.
Here's the cover of her book against the backdrop of the current Eel Pie Island footbridge.
from Acknowledgments
Special thanks to the real Eel Pie Island posse, old and new: Chris Faiers,
haiku poet and author of Eel Pie Island Dharma. You and your book were
so integral to my research. You've been so generous with your time and so
supportive of this project. You feel like a faraway friend and I smile every
time your name appears in my e-mail box. The same to Weed, (the real Weed),
who also let me use his name for one of my characters (I hope you like him!).
To read for free the original 1990 text of Eel Pie Island Dharma click on the link at the top right hand side of this blog under links of interest: Eel Pie Dharma. It's basically the same as the text of the Hidden Brook Press pubication, minus the crucial intro and picture sections.
Friday, 24 July 2026
Life Span Frontline Russian 35 Minutes: Charlie Angus
Vladimir Putin’s grand dream of the Greater Russia is turning to ash. More than four years have passed since he gambled on a lightning strike on Kyiv. He believed overpowering force would carry the day and that the people of Ukraine would welcome reunification with “Mother Russia”. Instead, the war went wrong from day one. And now it is going increasingly badly. The Russian military is paying a staggering price. Casualty rates are running between 30,000 and 50,000 a month. The Russian government is so desperate for recruits that they have emptied the prisons and are now offering a signing bonus of $80,000 with a further $140,000 in debt relief. For the average Russian, these are unheard-of sums. And yet, people understand what the money represents: a death sentence. Increasingly, they are doing whatever they can to avoid the military dragnet. The Ukrainian drone campaign is so deadly that the life expectancy of a Russian recruit on the front lines has been reduced to a mere 20 to 35 minutes. Such a kill rate makes previous “meat grinder” battles like the Somme, Verdun, and Stalingrad seem almost tame by comparison. It is estimated that over a million young people have fled Russia. They represent the future of the country, and they have no intention of dying for Putin’s attempt to impose “Greater Russia.” This war is not sustainable, and there is growing speculation over how long Putin can hang on. Putin, Trump and Netanyahu ushered in the age of monsters with an audacious disregard for the rule of law and a willingness to use the most vicious means to exercise power. But it is all going wrong. The three tyrants have wrought catastrophe on the world and on their people. But do not count them out yet. They are dangerous. Even more so when cornered. Especially Putin. The Rise of the Monster To understand how we got here, it is necessary to consider how Putin came to power. His rise was influenced by the choices made by the West after the fall of the Soviet Union. At the beginning of the 1990s, there was enormous relief because of the end of the Cold War. There was hope for the “peace dividend,” in which funds spent on the arms race could be diverted to improve citizens’ lives. There were those who understood that Russia’s transition to a stable democracy and a robust market economy would require significant investment and cooperation. Some advocated a modern Marshall Plan as was used to rebuild Germany and Japan in 1946. Such investments would also provide leverage to demilitarize the immense Soviet nuclear strike force. But Western leaders were in the throes of deregulation and neo-liberal mania. They opted for “shock doctrine,” believing that if they pulled out all state subsidies and planning, they could transform Russia into a capitalistic free market overnight. The result was a catastrophe for average Russians. In a mere four years, the average life expectancy of Russians dropped by six years. As gangsters and the rising oligarchs were looting the Russian economy, the American government pressured President Boris Yeltsin to demilitarize. But he was struggling with the enormous impacts of shock-doctrine politics. Goodwill from the West would have gone a long way to shore up a democratic ally. Erasing the Russian debt was one obvious option. The United States held only $2.8 billion in debt from the Soviet era. If the USA abolished the debt, they could have pushed the allies to alleviate the outstanding $65 billion debt. This would have given Yeltsin breathing room. But the Bush administration insisted that the Russians not only pay the debt that the Soviet system owed but also the debt that had been reneged on from the Tsarist era. The repayment was contingent on receiving badly needed grain shipments. Triumphal Western leaders didn’t pay much attention to how this was perceived in Russia. NATO, which had been established to contain the Soviet threat, began expanding further and further east even though there was no perceived enemy. Western triumphalism was everywhere. The former states of the Soviet Union were breaking apart — some peacefully, others in violent conflict. One person who recognized the danger of the moment was disgraced former president Richard Nixon. In a 1992 memo, he warned against making the same mistake the Allies made against Germany at Versailles in 1919. He feared that without goodwill and investments from the West, the nascent Russian democracy would crumble. Ian Shapiro, in the book After the Fall, writes that Nixon didn’t fear a return to communism but the rise of an “aggressive Russian nationalist who would threaten the emerging post-Cold War peace and the possibilities of peace that came with it.” Nixon saw the future. The aggressive Russian nationalist arrived in the form of Vladimir Putin. Nobody in the West paid much attention to how he actually came to power and we have been living with the fallout ever since. The Apartment Bombings On September 4, 1999, a car bomb exploded outside an apartment in the isolated city of Buynaksk near the Chechen border. The bomb completely destroyed the building, killing 64 and injuring 133. Five days later, an apartment building at 19 Guryanova Street in Moscow was hit by a massive bomb. The nine-story apartment building was torn apart, killing 106 people and seriously injuring 250 more. Russia’s security service blamed Chechen terrorists. The strange thing, though, was that no Chechen unit claimed responsibility. Chechnya had signed a peace deal after the brutal Chechen war for independence. Russian troops had departed. Why would they force a new conflict now? Four days later, another building was hit in Moscow. This one wiped out an 8-story building. It was total carnage with 119 dead and more than 200 seriously wounded. Each of these bombings had the impact of the notorious Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. People were terrified. It was at this point that Vladimir Putin stepped into the limelight. He was the former director of the FSB (the replacement for the KGB) who Boris Yeltsin had appointed as Prime Minister in August 1999. Some suggested his appointment as Prime Minister was payback for helping Yeltsin out of trouble with pesky prosecutors investigating corruption. Up until this moment, Putin was a shadowy figure. Not anymore. He boldly vowed to take the war to the Chechens. He promised to hunt down the killers and enact revenge. To a terrorized population, the shadow man seemed like a saviour. On September 16, a truck bomb exploded outside an apartment in Volgodonsk, killing 17 and injuring 69. Putin signed a decree for emergency powers to defend the people. He vowed to take the fight into Chechnya. But then on September 22, 1999, a fifth bomb was located in the city of Ryazan. A witness saw men bringing massive bags of explosives and a detonator into the basement of an apartment building. Police were called. The men were captured. But they weren’t Chechen terrorists; they were FSB agents — men working for the agency of Vladimir Putin. The police who came to the scene believed these bombs posed a deadly serious threat. The FSB, however, arrived to take control. They claimed the explosives were just bags of sugar and were being used as part of a training exercise. None of it added up. The story was quickly covered up and then forgotten as Putin launched a massive assault on Chechnya, violating the peace terms from the first Chechen war. Putin presented himself as the defender of Russia and moved quickly to take control of the Russian Federation. On New Year’s Eve 1999, Putin appeared on television and presented himself as the new leader of Russia. Some think that the new century began on 9/11, but it really began when Vladimir Putin took control of the once-mighty Russian empire. Those in Russia who tried looking into the apartment bombings or Putin’s increasingly autocratic rule ended up in prison or dead. Alexander Litvinenko and journalist Anna Politovskaya raised questions about who planted the bombs, and both were murdered. Other journalists were threatened and forced to flee. To western leaders, Putin represented stability. Money from the oligarchs continued to flow into London, New York and other western centres. Few lost sleep over Putin’s attack on Russian democracy. Clinton and Tony Blair embraced Putin as a man they could work with. George W. Bush Jr. reassured Americans that he had looked into Putin’s eyes and could see right into his soul. Reassured, Bush said Vladimir was a good guy. But the question of who planted the bombs remained a dark and unresolved issue. Was it the work of Putin and the FSB? If Putin was willing to terrorize his own people to take power, what extreme violence would he be willing to use to maintain power now that he is threatened? He has stated multiple times his willingness to use the deadly hypersonic missiles against Europe or nuclear weapons if his “red lines” are crossed. There is a kind of dark irony in the fact that it was Richard Nixon who saw the future, warning that a new age of monsters was ready to rise from the hubris of Western triumphalism. If any photos or images on this site are under copyright, please let us know and we will provide appropriate credit. This content is used in accordance with applicable copyright laws, including “fair dealing” under Canadian law and “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act, for purposes such as criticism, comment, and news reporting.Thank you for reading Charlie Angus / The Resistance.
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Monday, 20 July 2026
Charlie Angus and The Brothers Karamazov
Since Trump’s return, I have immersed myself in every book I can find that might explain how we got to this moment. Politics. Economy. History. Sometimes I begin a book and then move on to another one — Gaza, Brexit, Ukraine, Trump’s war on the justice department. The books are piled up all over the house. On top of the reading there is the writing. And the video production. Most mornings I start with a coffee and an attempt to map out a new essay or lock down a Meidas Canada interview. From there, I work on these issues back and forth until finally I sit down before bed to finesse things. Obsessive? Yah, probably. But I’m just doing my best to make sense of these dark times. In the first days of Trump, the task seemed straightforward and urgent — to encourage and reassure people by offering possibilities for resistance. Over the last 18 months, Canada has been remarkable at rallying together and standing strong on the international stage. But the intensity is hard to maintain. People get tired. They want to get back to their lives. The “Elbows Up” spirit becomes harder to maintain as we face increasingly complex trade-offs in the economy and democracy, while watching inaction on the looming climate crisis. And the bogeyman in Washington hasn’t gone away. Sometimes I feel like Cassandra shouting into the ether. At other times I have been accused of undermining the team. I don’t mind being written off as a crank. What concerns me is whether I have something to offer that is fresh, realistic and hopeful. Being a “content” creator is not on my bingo card. I felt I needed some perspective — outside the realm of politics. It began with Charles Dickens. This is not to give you the false impression that I am some kind of student of literature. Far from it. On long road trips, usually filled with podcasts, I tried my hand at an audiobook version of A Tale of Two Cities. The audiobook was 27 hours long. I didn’t think I would last more than 45 minutes. But the sweeping narrative, the vivid characters and the beauty of the writing had me spellbound. Sure, I remembered the punchline of “It’s a far, far better thing I do now than I have ever done before,” but I had forgotten the complexity of Sydney Carton. Could we create a believable character today who was as flawed, cynical and ultimately heroic as Sydney Carton? From A Tale of Two Cities, I fell into David Copperfield. I was enthralled with the world of Peggotty, the Micawbers, Steerforth and Uriah Heep. They not only became real, but they made themselves at home in my imagination. They travel with me. I then decided to try my hand at Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, with its long, drawn-out discussions of morality, justice, and faith. Not succinct. Not cut down. Entire chapters exploring questions of our responsibility to the world and each other. These books are considered high literature today. But back in the day they were the stuff of popular culture – serialized newspaper stories that people read and debated. It was popular entertainment. People devoured the ideas, then debated them with one another. Every generation comes of age with the arrogant belief that what came before was less enlightened and less aware than our own time. Dostoevsky and Dickens have forced me to do a major rethink. It is impossible to imagine such compelling plot lines being created today. Who would pay attention? We are busy people. Our sense of the world comes from two-sentence blurbs and the AI-generated memes that flash on our phones. Literacy rates are dropping like a stone. It was reported in 2024 that only 35% of American high school seniors were proficient enough to analyze the arguments in fictional themes. I have talked with teachers and professors who say that, as their students lose the attention span to read a novel, they are losing the ability to process complex arguments. Rose Horowitch, in a recent article in the Atlantic, argues that the end of reading as part of human existence has arrived. She points out that the culture of reading has existed for only a very short period in the long history of humanity. Our phone addictions have led to increasingly short attention spans and even shorter memories. Taking the time needed for the interior contemplation of reading is becoming increasingly difficult. What we are losing is the power of imagination. Without imagination, there is no way out of the dead end of the moment. Last year, 57 percent of Americans placed a bet on a gambling platform, but only 2 percent read to a child on a given day. What a strange reality in a world where access to information is at an unprecedented level. I remember being in a bar in Washington a dozen years ago when a friend tried to convince me that the next great work of literature would come from Twitter. It would be a global effort, he said. “There are millions and millions of people sharing their thoughts every minute,” he gushed. “There has never been like this before. We are watching a global library being created before our eyes. Imagine the potential.” Such was the naïve power of connectivity of the early 2000s. We thought we could bring the world together with the simple click of a screen. If that were possible it seemed possible to transform the future. Instead, this chimera of a global library descended into a toxic tower of Babel of selfies, bitching, and rage BOTs. Rather than becoming more connected, we found ourselves increasingly isolated from each other. Dostoevsky, writing in 1890, wouldn’t have been surprised. He warned that:
One of the themes of The Brothers Karamazov is that in the search for quick satisfaction and easy solutions, people become more and more isolated. The crisis of his time, like ours, was the loss of a sense of shared destiny:
Up until now, I have attempted to make sense of this chaotic age by tracking the connections, deconstructing the spin and identifying the key players who have brought us to this dark moment. I didn’t expect Karamazov to give me the deeper insight on these times. Alone we are fodder for the oligarchs and the far right. They would have us believe that we are nothing more than isolated individuals cast adrift in a chaotic world. The real challenge is to restore the awareness that we are bound together in the “common integrity” of all people. Dostoevsky urges us to see the bigger struggle and to fight for the “common integrity” of people. I will leave you with another thought that has become embedded in my thoughts. Dostoevsky tells the story of a teenage boy who was a cynical, angry youth, but in facing death, he suddenly recognizes the beauty of the world around him. He sees salvation in the birds, the trees, the abundance of life all around us. As he tries to tell people what he sees, they think he is descending into delusion. But he begs them to open their eyes,
I think of this story again and again as I head out on my early morning walk in the bush. It is indeed paradise but I am often walking and staring at my phone screen. In the chaos it is easy to forget that we are in paradise. All of us. Our fragile world has enough for all but not enough for the greed. It was thus when Dostoevsky wrote 140 years ago, it is so much more so now. The Brothers Karamazov are giving me some clear ideas about how to sustain myself for the fight ahead. If any photos or images on this site are under copyright, please let us know and we will provide appropriate credit. This content is used in accordance with applicable copyright laws, including “fair dealing” under Canadian law and “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act, for purposes such as criticism, comment, and news reporting.Thank you for reading Charlie Angus / The Resistance.
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