![]() ![]() ![]() He affirms the relevance of taboo ideologies like Marxism, demonstrating the importance of class analysis in understanding political realities and dealing with the ongoing collision between ecology and global corporatism. He also maps out the external and internal forces that destroyed communism, and the disastrous impact of the free-market victory on eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Parenti shows how rational fascism renders service to capitalism, how corporate power undermines democracy, and how revolutions are a mass empowerment against the forces of exploitative privilege. These terms are often bandied about, but seldom explored in the original and exciting way that has become Michael Parenti's trademark. Blackshirts & Reds explores some of the big issues of our time: fascism, capitalism, communism, revolution, democracy, and ecology. A bold and entertaining exploration of the epic struggles of yesterday and today. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() Meeting an avant garde performer in London and moving over to live with him in Hollywood is very far from an everyday tale. “It was not until I was advised by a radio producer a few years ago ‘to write something that no one else could write’ that it started to come about.” Mrs Butcher Bird told Get Surrey : “Frank encouraged me to write a book but I was never able to do it. The events in the late 1960s that led to a young, unspoiled English girl going to live in Hollywood, Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa has now been adapted into a Radio 4 play by Matthew Broughton. These are the words of Cobham resident Pauline Butcher Bird about a book she has written detailing her friendship with the iconic American rock musician Frank Zappa. ![]() It’s a coming of age story about a young girl finding her identity.” “I want people to know it’s not a story about drugs and rock ’n’ roll. ![]() ![]() ![]() It is an engaging story, presented realistically, as though by a participant in the action, with subtle characterisation, vivid word painting, and a wealth of comment, irony and humour. In contrast with Ruslán and Lyudmíla, Eugene Onégin is a story of Pushkin’s own time – about the society he belonged to, the places he knew, the people he mixed with, the situations they encountered. Tatyána falls in love with Onegin but he, coldly rejecting her advances and cynically courting her sister, is dragged into a tragedy of his own making. Lensky is engaged to Olga, a girl who lives on another neighbouring estate with her widowed mother and older sister Tatyána. The story, popularised outside Russia through Tchaikovsky’s opera, concerns a world-weary rake, Eugene Onégin, who, bored with the pleasures of St Petersburg’s high life, leaves the capital for his country estate, where he strikes up an unlikely friendship with his sensitive and idealistic young neighbour, the poet Vladímir Lensky. It is the major work of his maturity and widely regarded as his masterpiece. Pushkin wrote the verse-novel Eugene Onégin between the ages of 24 and 32. ![]() |