Experimental Blog # 203

Quotations from "This Brave New World" - India, China, and The United States by Anja Manuel

"While many Chinese modernizers would like to forget Mao and his atrocities and move on, his symbolic power remains. With the original Communist Party philosophy that he stood for dead, Mao's symbolism as a man who navigated China back to the center of world affairs is all that remains."
" < > power is constantly being negotiated: it is not based on the rule of law. The Communist Party is in control, so change happens from the top down."

"In contrast to China, India has an astonishing diversity of ethnic, religious, geographic, political, and caste affiliations. < > This led to the complex coalition politics and relatively weak central government that we see today. < > Competing factions and the short term outlook that comes with elected politics makes it more difficult for India to reform and to project a strong image to the world."

"In a one-party state, it is not surprising that in each region or city the Communist Party secretary is the most important person."
"As in America's democracy, it is sometimes difficult for Indian leaders to push through difficult reforms. Infighting between political parties, politicians focused on short-term election wins instead of long-term solutions, and the fact that many key policies < > are determined by India's states, all make the Indian government a slow-moving beast."

"Overall, almost 70 percent of Chinese women are employed outside the home, compared to 25 percent of Indian women, and 58 percent and declining in the United States."
"China also has 29 million female entrepreneurs - a quarter of the nation's total - and more self-made female billionaires than any other country."
" ... in India just 3 million women own {or partially own} small enterprises across the country ..."

" < > domestic violence in India is depressingly high. According to a government survey, 40 percent of women have experienced it, but experts believe the figure is over 84 percent {!} of women. < > This compares to between 25 and 40 percent in China, and about a quarter of women in the United States."

"It is most astounding that in recent years, China alone loaned more to developing countries than the World Bank < > In the next three decades China plans to build a dizzying mesh of infrastructure around Asia and, through similar initiatives{ to One Belt, One Road}, around the world."
"One Belt, One Road will be < > funded through a number of vehicles, most importantly through the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank {AIIB} < > New Silk Road Fund < > New Development Bank < >The China Development Bank"
""China is going where the West is reluctant to tread." < > The countries that rely most on Chinese investment read like a list of the world's outcasts: Zimbabwe, North Korea, Niger, Angola, Myanmar, and other unsavories. Of course China doesn't just invest in pariah states. More than a third of China's investments actually go to developed countries"

"In recent years, China, India, and other large developing countries have wanted more say in the running of the World Bank and IMF to reflect their growing importance in the world economy."
"Additionally, many developing countries feel that the IMF and World Bank conditions for loans are unnecessarily harsh. The organizations often impose painful austerity measures on countries that are already suffering."

"The world's institutions are outdated. They have been terrible at accommodating ascending powers, especially the largest ones: China and India. There is no easy, one-size-fits-all solution."

Experimental Blog # 202

Quotations and comments on "Where the Indus is Young" - A Winter in Baltistan and "Eight Feet in the Andes" by Dervla Murphy

"Where the Indus is Young" was published in 1977 and it is about a 'trek' that the author took with her daughter, Rachel, in Baltistan; which is also known as Kashmir. Their journey began about December 19, 1974 and ended on March 24, 1975. Mother and daughter were accompanied by a pack mule that they named Hallam, and Rachel rode on him most of the time.

"When we left for Pakistan Rachel was not yet six < > Had that journey{an earlier journey of four months in South India}not been so successful, from her point of view, I would never have contemplated taking her to Baltistan. < > Rachel is a natural stoic, and a muscular and vigorous little person, well able to walk ten or twelve miles a day without flagging."!!
   "To me it seems that the five-to-seven-year-old stage is ideal for travelling rough with small children. < > over-sevens tend to be much less philosophical in their reactions to the inconveniences and strange customs of far-flungery. By the age of eight, children have developed their own {usually strong} views about how they wish life to be, and are no longer happy automatically to follow the parental leader." Dervla Murphy reveals herself to be an original child psychologist.


"Eight Feet in the Andes" was published in 1983 and it is about another 'trek' that mother and daughter took in Peru that started about September 3, 1978 and ended on December 22.

"When we walked across the border bridge from Ecuador into Peru my daughter Rachel was aged nine years and eight months. < > We planned to buy a riding-mule in Cajamarca{which they did, and named Juana}. Then I would walk while Rachel rode the 1300 miles {or so} from Cajamarca to Cuzco."
"I looked past Juana to Rachel in the lead, her short legs covering the last stage of{for her} a 900-mile walk." Apparently, the 900 miles is the actual distance that Rachel actually walked of the 1300 mile 'trek'. On this journey the author writes that her 9, turning 10, year old daughter did walk 20 to 22 miles a day!

The extreme physical and mental stresses and risks that Dervla Murphy endures, and her daughter, too, are many times alarming, annoying, and, sometimes, make tedious reading; but really serious calamities always seem to be barely avoided, somehow. The very lengthy excerpts and quotations from Rachel's diary of this journey are among the most impressive parts of this book. For a nine year old Rachel wrote extremely well. Rachel was never revealed as a "captive" of her mother; and whenever any occasion arose, she always staunchly defended her.

Experimental Blog # 201

Comments on "On a Shoestring to Coorg" - An Experience of Southern India and "Wheels Within Wheels" by Dervla Murphy

"On a Shoestring to Coorg" - An Experience of Southern India is Dervla Murphy's 5th book, and it was published in 1976. The author is traveling, for the first time outside of Europe in 5 years, she says; and she is traveling with her daughter Rachel. Their trip lasted from November of 1973 to March of 1974.
Dervla Murphy's many detailed and vivid descriptions of everything about this journey in southern India, including many histories, are far too numerous to try to relate.
It appears that the author had her 42nd birthday at the beginning of this trip, in November. Very soon Rachel, too, had her birthday, in December. Rachel became 5 years old! Throughout their journey Rachel demonstrated that, like her mother, she was born to be very strong, mentally, as well as physically.

"Wheels Within Wheels" was published in 1979 and was Dervla Murphy's 8th book. The book is the story of the author's life from the beginning right up to the death of her father at 60 years of age in February of 1961, soon followed by the death of her mother, probably at 55 years of age, in August of 1962; and then comes the publication of her first book, "Full Tilt - Ireland to India With a Bicycle", in 1964.
"Wheels Within Wheels" is filled with unexpected events and narratives of all kinds. The result could hardly be more thought provoking.
At about 47 years of age Dervla Murphy was not yet half way through her life of extra arduous travel and travel writing.

Experimental Blog # 200

Comments on "Through the Embers of Chaos - Balkan Journeys" and "The Island That Dared - Journeys in Cuba" by Dervla Murphy

"Through the Embers of Chaos - Balkan Journeys"

The first few pages of this book describe a trip the author took to Croatia in 1991. At that time Yugoslavia had not yet disintegrated.
Part II of the book is about 50 pages, and it describes the author's visit to Serbia in 1999, about 8 years later.
Part III is about 280 pages, and it describes the author's journeys around Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, Montenegro, and Kosovo in 2000. During this time Dervla Murphy was 68 years old, and she traveled by bicycle! She often pedaled over 50 miles in one day, and went up and down who knows how many thousands of feet; and, it seems, on trails and roads that no one else would ride on.

Dervla Murphy's physical and mental stamina are extraordinary, and she seems completely fearless. She was attacked and thrown to the ground twice, but she continued to take risks that, probably, no one else would take. She did not carry a weapon, a gun, although she could pretend that she had one.


"The Island That Dared - Journeys in Cuba"

For about the first 100 pages of this book, in 2005, the 73 to 74 year old Dervla Murphy is traveling in Cuba with her daughter and her three granddaughters, aged 6, 8, and 10. She is not averse to requiring unusual physical and mental effort from them, but they don't seem to mind; and they apparently accept these things as "normal".

For the rest of this book, in 2006 and 2007, Dervla Murphy is "trekking" by herself, not riding a bicycle as she did on so many other of her journeys.

In the "Island That Dared" Dervla Murphy reveals her very "left-wing" sympathies probably more than in most of her previous travel books. However, people do not have to share the author's politics to be captivated by this book. She is very highly informative about many matters, including: Fidel Castro and Che' Guevera. Ultimately, however, Dervla Murphy is not always very clear, about Cuban "participatory democracy", for instance; or completely persuasive in her arguments.

Experimental Blog # 199

Comments on "Full Tilt - Ireland to India With a Bicycle" and "In Ethiopia With a Mule" by Dervla Murphy

These 2 books are the first and fourth books written by Dervla Murphy. They were published in 1965 and 1968 and are about trips that she took in 1963 and 1966-67 when she was 31 and 35 years of age.

The continuous abundance of so much detail and so many superlatives that the author uses in both books to describe her surroundings and the events of her travels, day after day; and the complete absence of photographs, even though the author took pictures with her camera, probably cause some readers to assume that her writing should not be considered to be 100% reliable. However, her writing certainly is captivating and informative. Both of these books receive very high reviews, even 40 years after they were written.

Dervla Murphy obviously has amazing strength and endurance for physical and mental pain and exhaustion, and challenges and dangers of all kinds. She also has remarkable ability to communicate and establish relationships with all kinds of people who are completely alien to her, even when they do not understand each others' languages. She also knows how to manage all kinds of animals, both friendly and domestic, as well as, dangerous and wild.

Experimental Blog # 198

Quotations and comments on "Silverland - A Winter Journey beyond the Urals" by Dervla Murphy

Here is one quotation from a very interesting summary, of about 4 pages, of the history of Belarus:
"A year later{1922} eastern Belarus became a Soviet Socialist Republic < > During the 1930s collectivized farms, artificial famines, heavy industries and Stalinist purges arrived; no one knows how many mass slaughterings took place. In the Kurapaty Forest, near Minsk, the bodies of more than 100,000 men and women were exhumed in 1988."

Joseph Stalin is mentioned on at least 17 pages in this book; and Vladimir Putin is written about on at least 27 pages.
The author clearly does not like the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, and she mentions it on at least 10 pages.

"What Soviet citizens did enjoy was freedom from worry about jobs, housing. heating, education, health care, pensions. Although the implacable pursuit and punishment of dissidents continued after 1956, the mass of the population could then lead a notably less stressful life than their forefathers.."

"Thus the IMF, World Bank and US Treasury begat an unrestrained oligarchy eager to stamp on those seedlings of democracy - visible in corners of the Kremlin - which the West claimed to be nurturing."
Even more convincing, the author quotes the World Bank Chief Economist, Joseph Stiglitz, "For the majority of those living in the former Soviet Union, economic life under capitalism has been even worse than the old Communists had said it would be ...By siding so firmly so long with those at the helm when huge inequality was created through the corrupt privatization process, the USA, IMF and the international community have indelibly associated themselves with policies that, at best, promoted the interests of the wealthy at the expense of the average Russian.""

"In 2005 a reviewer < > diagnosed me as 'a typical old Irish Leftie [who] cannot disguise her sneaking regard for the Soviet Union'. Not quite a bull's-eye but Mr Thompson didn't quite miss the target."

"Stalin therefore expended human lives, instead of capital, on his gigantic development projects. At its zenith the gulag system, begun in 1930, controlled twenty-one million prisoners and was administered by 800,000 officials. < > During the Great Terror{1937-38} more than a million were executed and seven or eight million sent to camps. < > In contrast, between 1876 and 1904 the czar's regime imposed the death penalty on 486 criminals and terrorists, an annual average of seventeen."

Dervla Murphy is ideological about the world in the extreme, but she has virtually amazing physical and mental strength. She has traveled, very often by bicycle, all over the world; and she made this journey at about 71 years of age! And, besides that, during the winter!

 It seems a little bit surprising, however, that in spite of her apparently life-long interest in virtually everything left-wing, including the Soviet Union, that she has never bothered to study Russian. However, because of her age, she was born in 1931, she might be entitled to an allowance.

Experimental Blog # 197

Quotations from "Leaving Orbit" - Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight by  Margaret Lazarus Dean

"Together the five orbiters Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour have flown a total of 133 successful missions, an unequaled accomplishment of engineering, management, and political savvy. But it's the two disasters that people remember, that most shape the shuttle's story."

"Hugely wasteful; hugely grand. Adjust the focus of your eyes and the same project goes from being the greatest accomplishment of humankind to a pointless show of misspent wealth."
"In reality, the most shuttle launches NASA ever accomplished in a single calendar year was nine, in 1985 - far short of the magic number of twenty-five."
"In all, twenty-four missions launched and landed successfully between April 1981 and January 1986."

"The space shuttle project never did get us any closer to Mars, but it deployed more than half the cargo ever carried to space and sent three hundred fifty-five people into orbit."
"The orbiting laboratory has been occupied non-stop since November 2, 2000 ..."

"Eleven crewed missions, including six successful trips to the lunar surface"
"December 1968: First trip to lunar orbit on Apollo 8"
"December 1972: Final moon landing Apollo 17"

"Ongoing Access to Low-Earth Orbit":
"April 1981: First test flight of space shuttle Columbia"
"July 2011: Final flight of the space shuttle program{Atlantis}