Karen G. Lloyd. Intraterrestrials: discovering the strangest life on Earth.

     Karen Lloyd wrote a brilliant book about the microbial life forms on Earth, so strange that no science fiction author could seemingly invent anything like that. The book is hard reading. This is an example: "Indeed, we find that at increasing depths in marine sediments, microbes make enzymes with a higher specificity that are available in the subsurface, suggesting that they are specially adapted for this environment". Or "the researchers also found genes suggesting that they might have passed hydrogen back and forth with an endosymbiont (maybe a proto-mitochondria), as well as external structures that would help them hang on to their Alphaproteobacterial friend". But overall, the book is a wonder. 

Alexander Clapp. The waste wars: wild afterlife of your trash.

 Clapp is an alarmist. His book enumerates many problems with disposal of the "industrial" wastes, most prominently of commercial ships. He lists many disasters following the disassembling of ships and the damage of the procedure to the environment. This part of his narrative is exciting and helpful for understanding of the modern environmental challenges. 

    Yet, he does not propose any solutions to these problems. In most of the book, the positives from the ships' dismantling are glided over. First, recycling of steel, and second, the reuse of the amenities of the passenger ships -- he mentions the cabin furniture, microwaves, etc. after their cleaning -- saves enormous energy and materials. In particular, currently the demand for coal for coking and the iron ore has been significantly subdued and enormous quantities of new steel is produced by (relatively) efficient electric smelters. 

    Many of the problems he lucidly describes: horrible conditions inside the ships' hulks, leakage of toxic liquids before and during dismantling and using the poor countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh as a garbage disposals for the rich countries -- can be addressed within either technological advancements or enlightened social policy. Not all of the former require a particularly high technology though a hulk-plying robots would help. For instance, chemists could develop gas mixtures, something like a hot mixture of carbon dioxide with hydrogen in non-explosive concentrations, which can flush out the residuals of oils and other petroleum substances before the dismantling crews in hazmat suites are left in. Similarly, there could be measures for protecting the workers if only rich countries become moderately interested in this. In these times, in the US everything which smacks of non-military international aid is taboo; and the EU hastily prepares to war with Russia. 

Sergio Luzzato. The first fascist. The sensational life and dark legacy of the Marquis de Mores.

       

                                           Marquis de Mores as American cowboy and gunslinger.

            Marquis de Mores was a vicious anti-Semite, not very much different from the French aristocrats of his age and class, adventurer and psychopathic killer but the fascist he was not. His claim to fame resulted from his charisma and idolization by the early XX century nationalists like Maurice Barres, Charles Maurras and later fascists rather than from his own political ideas. Mores' appropriation of the fasces, a Roman symbol, as an emblem for extreme nationalism was probably an accident. 

    The end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century was full of dashing and violent characters: Prince Pierre Napoleon, Prince Victor Napoleon,  Lawrence of Arabia, Ernst Junger and Lettov-Vorbeck to name a few. Even Russia, which did not have overseas colonial empire had Ethiopia treading poet Nicolas Gumilev and leading Duma member Gutschkov, who fought for the Boers against the English, added to the sample. 

     Fascism presumes some plethora (i.e. fasces) of social ideas, which de Mores would find impossible to reconcile to. First, racism and anti-Semitism are optional. Mussolini's original Fascist State was hardly anti-Semitic and its Race Laws were promulgated only under pressure from the Nazi Germany and against the wishes of several prominent members of the Fascist hierarchy. Spanish Francoism and, especially, Salazar's corporatist Estado Novo in Portugal were barely having any anti-Semitic features mostly induced by the prevailing Catholic Church. Salazar looked the other way at the exodus of European Jews through the Portuguese territory. Mannerheim in Finland had nothing against the Jews as long as they were not Russian in origin. Genocide of Jews in Romania under Marshal Antonescu had its roots in endemic anti-Semitism of Romanian ruling classes and intellectual elites. 

    Fascism means that all public organizations must subscribe to a narrow code of rigid ideas. All for profit and non-profit corporations must act in support of the agenda of the state, and agents of the state sit in most corporate boards and media outlets. Current European Union resembles traditional fascism much more than aristocratic chauvinist fantasies of de Mores. During the occupation of France many members of the traditional French far-right -- La Cagoule and the original fascist party -- ended up in Nazi prisons. The real deal Nazis detested the competition.