Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Diana Johnstone is an astute and longtime analyst on global affairs, whose highly readable memoir is peppered with insights on the world events she experienced, reported on and sometimes participated in--from the Viet Nam War to today's Yellow Vest movement in France. This mixture of autobiography and history encompasses both the personal evolution of a spirited American journalist and her keen insights into the major events of the last half century whose rectitude and indeed legality she most frequently decried. Circle in the Darkness revisits many of its key events, adding insights with the benefit of hindsight. It covers: -early anti-war protests against the Viet Nam War in the United States, -student days in Yugoslavia, -life in the international press milieu in Germany during the Cold War, -May '68 in France, -the turbulent politics of Italy in the 1970s, -the impact on Europe of the criminal Middle East wars, -the decline of French intellectuals from Sartre to Bernard Henri L vy, -the massive popular movement in the 1980s against deployment of U.S. nuclear missiles in Europe, - the transformation of Europe's Green Parties from a leading force for peace to apologists for war on grounds of "human rights," -today's Yellow Jacket movement that threatens the toppling of France's Macron government and marks a popular awakening to the lies of politicians and media in this long night of criminal deception. She recounts the rise and fall of antiwar sentiment in the Western left from its resistance to the Viet Nam War to its acceptance of so-called humanitarian wars. Having served for six years as press officer of the Greens in the European Parliament, she enjoyed an exceptional vantage point from which to observe and analyze the role of the European Union in sacrificing democracy to the demands of technocratic neoliberal globalization. Making no secret of her personal viewpoints, while scrupulous in her respect for the facts, Diana Johnstone blames the gullible ignorance of a self-satisfied "left" for providing moral cover for NATO's role in the criminal destruction of Yugoslavia and Libya, as well as for the destructive Western intervention in Syria. While so doing, she exposes the realities of the process called Globalization, which aggravates economic inequalities by unleashed capitalism and replaces diplomacy with threats, sanctions and military intervention, has led to a drastic reduction of democracy (if such indeed it is) in the "d
Synopsis
Circle in the Darkness recounts veteran journalist Diana Johnstone's lifelong effort to understand what is going on in the world, seeking the truth about our troubled times beyond the veils of government propaganda and media deception. For Johnstone, the political is personal. From her experience of Cold War hostilities as a student in Yugoslavia, in the movement against the U.S. war against Vietnam, in May '68, in professional and alternative journalism, in the historic peace movement of the 1980s that led to the reunification of Germany, in the transformation of the German Greens from peace to war party and the European Union's sacrifice of democracy to "globalization", her critical viewpoint dissects events and identifies trends.
She recounts in detail how the Western left betrayed its historical principles of social justice and peace and let itself be lured into approval of aggressive U.S.-NATO wars on the fallacious grounds of "human rights". Subjects range from caustic analysis of the pretentious confusion of French philosophers to the stories of many courageous individuals whose struggle for peace and justice ended in deep personal tragedy, with a great deal in between.
Circle in the Darkness is a lucid, uncompromising tour through half a century of contemporary history intended especially for those who may aspire against all obstacles to change its course for the better.