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MIND MAPS
A Blog by Christopher J. Soelistyo
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Reading "The Hundred Years' War on Palestine" by Rashid Khalidi
This book by Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi is an attempt to cast the entirety of Zionist and Israeli history as a...
Christopher Soelistyo
Jul 7, 202236 min read
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Reading "Not One Inch" by Mary E. Sarotte
This book is incredibly timely. Published just three months before Russia invaded Ukraine this February, "Not One Inch: America, Russia...
Christopher Soelistyo
Jun 18, 202239 min read
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America: Ukraine's Armourer
Since the Russian invasion began on February 24th, military assistance to Ukraine from NATO member states has been impressive. The West...
Christopher Soelistyo
May 9, 202213 min read
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War and Inflation
The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24th has delivered a massive shock to global markets, especially concerning such commodities...
Christopher Soelistyo
May 3, 202210 min read
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Reading "Shutdown" by Adam Tooze
The Covid pandemic is the global crisis par excellence. Rarely, if ever, before had a singular event impacted so many people across the...
Christopher Soelistyo
Apr 21, 202221 min read
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Ukraine: Financial War Against Russia
Since Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24th, the West has fought back with a devastating raft of economic and financial...
Christopher Soelistyo
Apr 17, 20224 min read
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Reading "London Calling" by Alban Webb
Written by Broadcasting historian Alban Webb, London Calling: Britain, the BBC World Service and the Cold War is an eye-opening portrayal...
Christopher Soelistyo
Apr 12, 202227 min read
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Ukraine: The "NATO Enlargement" Question
On February 24th, Vladimir Putin's Russia launched a war of aggression against Ukraine, under the strange pretexts of "genocide" against...
Christopher Soelistyo
Mar 9, 202217 min read
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Reading "Imperial Brain Trust" by Laurence Shoup and William Minter
Who controls American foreign policy? The answer, according to Shoup and Minter, is a concentrated subsection of American society,...
Christopher Soelistyo
Mar 7, 202254 min read
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Why is Ukraine the West's Fault?: Transcribing John Mearsheimer
For at least two months now, tensions between Russia and the West have ignited over a Russian military buildup on the borders of Ukraine,...
Christopher Soelistyo
Jan 29, 202225 min read
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Reading "The Wages of Destruction" by Adam Tooze
How was it possible that for the second time in a generation, Germany should have embarked on a campaign of conquest and destruction,...
Christopher Soelistyo
Jan 5, 202258 min read
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Reading "The Idea of the Brain" by Matthew Cobb
Zoology professor Matthew Cobb has delivered an exciting and accessible history of humanity's enduring journey to understand its own...
Christopher Soelistyo
Oct 30, 202125 min read
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Reading "The How and the Why" by David Park
"The How and the Why: An Essay on the Origins and Development of Physical Theory" is an impressive monograph by Professor David Park on...
Christopher Soelistyo
Aug 15, 202139 min read
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The US Exit from Afghanistan
On April 14th, US President Joe Biden announced that US forces would withdraw from Afghanistan by September 11th (recently pushed forward...
Christopher Soelistyo
Aug 2, 20217 min read
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Militarised AI: A New Frontier of Warfare?
This article was originally published on UCL Pi Media in April 2019 under the title "Militarised AI: A Sinister Deus Ex Machina":...
Christopher Soelistyo
Jul 12, 20215 min read
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Russia's Energy Relationship with the European Union
Relations between Russia and the European Union have long been uneasy. Geopolitics continues to be a source of tension, and the anxieties...
Christopher Soelistyo
Jun 29, 20219 min read
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Tehran's Chinese Backstop
On June 19th, Iran's presidential election was won by a man widely described in Western media as a "hardliner" and "ultra-conservative"....
Christopher Soelistyo
Jun 23, 20216 min read
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Kuwait: The Trials of an Oil Exporter
On June 13th, the Central Bank of Kuwait (CBK) announced the publication of its annual Economic Report, which revealed, among other...
Christopher Soelistyo
Jun 15, 20215 min read
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Nuclear Weapons: The Logic of Strategic Superiority
(This is a re-post of an article that I wrote in February 2019, heavily influenced by Matthew Kroenig's book "The Logic of American...
Christopher Soelistyo
Jun 14, 20215 min read
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Reading "The Jakarta Method" by Vincent Bevins
I began reading this expecting it to be a book about Washington's involvement in the enormous mass murder of Indonesians in 1965/66, but...
Christopher Soelistyo
Jun 13, 20215 min read
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