Experimental Blog # 184

Quotations and notes from "Strange Rebels - 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century" by Christian Caryl

"As events unfold around us, we interpret what we see through the prism of precedent, and then are amazed when it turns out that our actions never play out the same way twice."
"The upheaval in Iran had an explosive effect on the rest of the Islamic world."
" .. both Washington and Moscow failed to predict the forces that the invasion{of Afganistan in late 1979}would unleash."

"These five stories": the rise of Deng Xiaoping to the "top job" in China, the election of Margaret Thatcher as Britain's prime minister, the choice of  Karl Jozef Wojtyla{John Paul II}as the Pope of the Catholic church, the rise of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the leader of Iran, and the "budding Islamists" of Afganistan{who eventually defeated the Soviet invaders}, "have much more in common than at first meets the eye."

"The protagonists of 1979 were, in their own ways, participants in a great backlash against revolutionary overreach."

"Marxism  < > was not just an academic theory about historical truth; its adherents believed that they held the key to superior economic management as well."

"Westerners did not know what to make of Khomeini. The leaders of contemporary revolutions were supposed to be flamboyant, strident, perhaps even promiscuous or a bit messy - like Mao or Che or the student activists in Paris or Frankfurt in the 1960s."