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okay three I
welcome to Sputnik orbiting the world
with me George Galloway and me gri Libya
has gone completely to hell and there's
no timetable for a return Journey there
may not be one at all David Cameron
William ha and the other fools who
govern our Affairs bombed the hell out
of Libya of course in order to save it
but by any reasoning outside of the
lunatic asylum the NATO War has resulted
in an unmitigated disaster arguably even
greater than the disaster we unleashed
in Iraq if only because Libya is a lot
closer to here a Mediterranean country
only a short sale from the European
Mainland as if things weren't bad enough
in Libya to the alphabet soup of Waring
factions tearing the country apart we
must now add the dreaded Isis last week
they lined up 21 Christians on the beach
facing Europe and and cut off their head
one by one of course they were Egyptian
Christians cops whose blood for the west
and especially its media was well less
valuable thereby but the atrocity has
triggered some events which may prove
momentous joining us now is haa K
Mustafa who despite her years is a very
considerable expert on the Arab mrib
thanks very much haa for coming back on
the show the last time you were here
Libya was in a mess it's arguably now
finished as a state it's absolutely a
failed State there is no longer any
libia to speak of to be honest it's
fractured it's War torn and it's now the
new playground for Isis murderers we'll
come back to Isis in a minute there was
already a real existential crisis before
Isis emerged on the scene the country is
effectively in three parts maybe more uh
Waring militias have set up rival
governments
uh One controls the airport so you can't
get into the country unless you go
through them a different set of people
is in Benghazi pretending to be the
government government in tripa
pretending to be the government who is
the government is there any government
there is no government there are a few
people claiming that they're somehow
ruling the show but no one really is
it's a lawless country and it's
completely left of its own devices and
we're seeing the results day in day out
it's a situation that is deteriorating
as we speak and of course all this was
obviously predict predictable given that
it was bombed into democracy and as
we've seen before and was discussed
before when you bomb a country into
democracy this is the result you get the
idea was to get rid of the Gaddafi
regime even though that regime was
cooperating very profitably indeed uh
with the West uh relations with sarosi
relations with Tony Blair and so on uh
for some reason they decided Gaddafi had
to go and go he did uh nobody seems to
have known that the result would be
exactly as Gaddafi predicted I remember
them laughing when he said that the
uprising in Benghazi uh was Al-Qaeda
they laughed out loud on the television
at this idea and yet that's where we now
are Isis and Al-Qaeda Breakaway rejected
by Al-Qaeda as too extreme too sectarian
too fanatic even for Usama Bin Laden's
outfit uh where are they
what are they doing and are they going
to grow stronger they're very likely to
grow stronger because of course they
operate in areas where there is no
resistance to their expansion and of
course we know that the country was
flooded with arms at the time of the
NATO Onslaught so now there are arms
everywhere there are youthful there's a
youthful population in Libya doing
nothing and actually arm to the teeth
there are fraction Wars and and you know
struggles between the various parties so
I think it's a perfect ground it's the
fer it's the ideal fertile ground for
Isis expansion even better than Syria
and Iraq because of course these
countries still have some sort of well
they have a stable government and they
have armies resisting Isis expansion
Libya doesn't and so therefore Libya
Isis is almost has found its perfect
place to actually develop and spread
across the sah the reason that the
Taliban came to power in Afghanistan was
exactly this scenario the country was
broken into pieces rival gangs were
murdering each other the Taliban came
along and said we are are a gang but we
are the strongest gang and we have a
plan and they eventually subjugated all
the other Waring parties or at least
drove them out uh and came to power is
there a real chance that on the
Mediterranean Isis might actually
achieve power in Libya well for one
thing comparing them to the Taliban is
actually it's the the Taliban are much
nicer than Isis Isis were very you know
very opposed to women's rights and all
the rest of but they didn't actually
line up 21 Christians and and beheaded
them in front of the cameras there are a
lot of things that I that the Taliban
actually never dared doing so even the
comparison is actually is perhaps
unbelievable absolutely they blew up
statues of the Buddhas but they didn't
cut people's heads off and film it and
in such you know glorified way so I
think the the Taliban almost appear now
as the nice guys in comparison to Isis
and of course I believe that now Isis
facing no resistance there is absolutely
no reason why they wouldn't expand the
problem now is actually to at least
contain them within Libya and that's
probably going to be the challenge for
the other countries that's what I was
just about to ask what about the
neighboring countries of Libya are they
affecting are they affected by this of
course they were very scared to see an
Isis expansion within their borders so
we know already that Egypt has
intervened and and they bombed some
areas some Isis strongholds we know that
Tunisia and Algeria are working together
in order to sort of at least secure both
the borders of Tunisia and Algeria in
ensuring that Isis doesn't move into
that very wide desert area that is very
difficult to actually monit
is there an actual border well no it's
it's the Sahara Desert it's very very
difficult to secure you obviously with
the the Algerian government which has
it's a oil rich country and therefore
has good equipment to monitor to Fly
Above the area and actually secure it
more or less attempt to secure it I
think there is some effort in that part
of of the region however it remains a
very very difficult area to to police
definitely another difference between
the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and Isis is
that the Taliban were local they wanted
to rule only Afghanistan Al-Qaeda and
Isis have uh not just a pan Arabic uh
ambition uh but uh when they lined these
people up on the beach to cut their
heads off they were pointing at Europe
and saying we're headed your way uh
Libya is very very close to Europe uh
and that's perhaps concentrating the
mind of politicians who helped Isis and
Al-Qaeda grow into the power that they
are in in the first place either
advertently or
inadvertently uh how realistic is it
that Libya will become a bridge head for
this kind of extremism into Europe in a
big way I I think that that's sort of
almost a te a scare mongering technique
they they've been really trying to poke
the West for a while with the beheadings
of the two Western journalists but
obviously I think their ambition Remains
the Arab world I think it's an the
easier thing to do crossing the
Mediterranean tackling major armies
major Western armies is a is a
completely different issue and I think
while they're trying to work on that
sort of scaremongering thing I think
their ambition now is to expand within
Africa the Sahel belt which is obviously
very badly secured which where there are
areas that have have facing tribal
issues so they're probably going to go
for the easy option which is to spread
across Sahel and then Unite with Boko
Haram which is in Nigeria which has
already declared itself a part of this
caliphate this bogus self-appointed
caliphate based in Iraq Syria
uh but now the uh the state of Borno in
the north of Nigeria has declared itself
to be a part of this worldwide uh
Empire one of the obvious points is that
these people are thriving in the absence
of anybody else with a plan uh there's a
failure of Arab nationalism there's a
failure of socialism uh and islamism uh
of this particularly virulent brand
looks like the only sh and tone well one
of the reasons why these failures in the
Arab world came about was very much
because the Arab Spring the original
Arab Spring was hijacked you know there
were M the the movements that triggered
the Arab Spring were very legitimate
these were people who were requesting
more freedoms they wanted to rid their
governments of Corruption of cronyism so
these were very legitimate claims by all
Arabs who took to the streets in 20111
but of course with the NATO intervention
with the threat with the uh destruction
of of Syria through proxy uh movements
from funded by the Saudis funded by
Western governments we've seen the
collapse more or less the collapse of of
Syria we see that Iraq is a basket case
as a result of the 2003 Invasion and
Libya as well you know these were major
points that kept the sort of pan arabist
movement together now with the collapse
of this of course what will fill the
void the only void that can be filled is
obviously these movements that are
coming in with the message well we're
we're Muslim we're all under the banner
of Islam we can work together and to
many people that message is actually
appealing in the absence of a credible
alternative their message is actually
very attractive now General CeCe uh
who's killed a fair number of Egyptians
himself was sufficiently outraged at the
killing of 21 Egyptians in Libya to bomb
the country kind of had a right to don't
you think it it's difficult to say I
think as you say for somebody who who
showed no remorse in gunning down 1400
unarmed protesters I think this is a bit
of a show for his domestic audience as
as opposed to really trying to tackley
this I think to a certain extent for for
for CeCe having the islamist Bogan is
very good for his standing in Egypt
because it allows him to continue to
crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood on
any form of dissent by saying well look
if I'm not this firm this is these are
the guys that you're going to get in
Egypt so I think it's more of a show
than actually a genuine desire to to
intervene and stop the spread of Isis in
the last days uh eminent people uh some
of them fools but eminent nonetheless
have begun to raise the Spectre of uh a
NATO ground invasion of Libya uh I would
have thought that very unwise myself do
you think they're going to do it and if
they did what would be the result if
they did the result would be a bad
situation turned worse I think there is
no secret about that we we know for a
fact and if we look at it objectively
and we observe the map of the Arab world
we can see that every Western
intervention has turned a bad situation
worse so I kind of imagine anything
worse than another NATO intervention in
in Libya now are they going to do it I
think that there is a desire to appeal
to Western audiences and say that
something is being done I think that
seeing planes war planes pounding an
Arab country is the thing that is going
to be fed to audiences but is it going
to solve any problem I don't think it
will no no bombing cannot uh end this
problem indeed as you say may well be
making it worse uh but something has to
be done what is it that's a very
difficult question because who do you
speak to who are Isis how many people
are part of Isis it's very very
difficult to say we've we've heard that
in the part of in in less than a year
they went from being a group of 500 to
some are saying 10,000 20,000 we
actually don't even have an accurate
figure of how many Isis Fighters there
are who are they who is who the Central
Command we've heard of one figure which
is Al badi and then we don't know
anything about the rest so it's really
very difficult to tackle some sort of
bizarre organization organization that
seems a death cart that seems to spread
everywhere that is has absolutely no
remorse in spreading death and and
killings everywhere but of course is not
in interested in any form of negotiation
or dialogue so how do you deal with it
I'm afraid I don't know haa if you don't
know nobody knows and that's indeed the
problem coming up after the break
reading the world with an Morgan we'll
be right back
welcome back to Sputnik and Morgan set
out to read every book in the world well
not quite every book but a book from
every country it's safe to say at least
in this country she's definitely the
only person who's ever done that her own
book about the book she read is called
reading the world and from where better
to view the world and it's literature
than on board the Sputnik and Morgan
welcome it is a quite beautiful bookk
you to look at and to read you went
Around the World in 80 Days not quite 80
days and you didn't go around the world
you read them all from here what a
wonderful idea how did it come to you
thank you well it came about because of
a chance comment that someone made to me
that made me look at my bookshelves and
I'd always thought of myself as a very
cultured uh cosmopolit sort of person
but when I looked at my bookshelves they
told a rather different story in fact
pretty much all the books on there were
by British or American authors and there
was nothing in Translation and I just
thought why on Earth is that that's very
strange why would I limit myself to such
a narrow tranch of what the world has to
offer and the next year 2012 was going
to be a very International year for the
UK what with the Olympics and the
Queen's Jubilee so I thought well why
don't I use this as an opportunity to go
out and meet the world through books
it's a wonderful idea obviously no one
else had ever thought of it lucky for
you uh but it reminded me of a
conversation I had in the mountains of
Nicaragua during the first Sandinista
government with one of the Guerilla
leaders commandante Victor terado he
said to me if I asked you to name the
Geniuses in world history every genius
you would name would be a European and
of course he was right British people
have restricted themselves and been
restricted too by our education system
to the literature of Britain and North
America and not even that much of North
America uh even the European great works
of literature are very rarely translated
and on people's shelves why do you think
that is it's a tough one I think it's
partly um what we've been used to and
inevitably uh with the British Empire
going out there's been a sort of um
history of exporting British culture the
British uh English language which is
part of it English is such a widely
spoken language around the world these
days um and so there's an imbalance um
for writers everywhere there's this huge
uh Holy Grail of being published in
English if as a French writer you're
published in English you suddenly have
an incomparable reach because English is
not only the most published language but
the most translated language so if you
get a deal in English you then have huge
uh huge uh much greater chance of being
translated into other languages so
there's that um and because of this this
imbalance you know a huge number of
texts going out of English and very few
coming in it's very hard for that to
change that's a very slow process at the
moment it's only about 4.5% of uh poetry
drama and fiction that's published in
this country that is translated wow yeah
there are exceptions although they don't
travel as far as I would have thought
Gabrielle Garcia Marquez
uh author of great great works uh there
was a time when quite a lot of people
were reading Solitude and other uh other
great works but when he died recently I
tweeted uh lamentation uh of that uh
death and a really surprising number of
people asked me who's he really gosh
that's very interesting yeah bit
depressing yeah yeah absolutely so so
tell us about your findings of reading
the world well I one of the things that
was amazing with the project um because
my reading had been so narrow I knew
that I couldn't do it on my own I would
have no idea what a good book to read
from Namibia would be so my first thing
was I needed help I needed advice and so
I launched the project with an appeal to
the world's readers just saying could
you uh recommend what I should read and
I had no idea whether that's right just
online I had no idea whether anyone
would be interested at all it might I
might be on my own um doing this crazy
Quest and um actually what happened was
that within hours people were getting in
touch and first of all it was friends
and then friends of friends and then
people who came to it and I had no idea
how they'd found it and four days after
I launched the project with this appeal
I had a message from a woman named qua
Lumpa saying I love the sound of this
project I'd like to go to my local
English language book shop and choose
your Malaysian book and post it to you
would you let me do that and I just
thought amazing there's this woman more
than 6,000 miles away doing this really
generous thing I've got to do this
project now now because someone's made
this effort and time and again
throughout the year book lovers all over
the planet helped which was incredible
amazing what were the major differences
other major differences you see I'm one
of those who believes there's nothing
called English culture or French culture
or namibian culture there's only culture
uh were there differences major
differences in the works that you read
There were in some ways um some of the
works I read were from places where the
written tradition actually isn't that
Central so it's more about telling
stories orally and that in in itself was
a challenge because how do you record
those stories and present them so that
someone thousands of miles away can read
them um so for example in North uh West
Africa there's a very strong oral
storytelling tradition and that uh was
fascinating to read a book that had been
constructed from recording one of these
performances um then there were books
that came from Tiny Pacific island
nations um like kirati which actually
featured a number of different genres so
you had stories but also poetry woven in
and artwork local artwor was woven in
and so the distinctions that we used to
thinking of you know fiction poetry
drama art they were actually much less
uh distinct in those um in those texts
how many books did you read for this
project I did well actually in the end I
did 197 so I did all un recognized
countries which is 195 plus Taiwan which
used to be a UN member and then as the
year went on I became conscious of all
these territories that weren't
represented on this list and even more
conscious of them out there and so I
decided to do an extra territory that
would represent the rest of the world
and people who visited the blog chose
that and that ended up being Kurdistan
as well speaking about un represented or
not what was the did you find any
political propagandas with throughout
this literature that you were reading
yes well perhaps the most interesting
example was North Korea um I read a book
from North Korea now initially I thought
that I would get um a story by one of
the defectors there are a number of
really compelling Memoirs that have been
published by people who've escaped in
recent decades some of them lat are
discredited well indeed absolutely and I
thought initially maybe that's what I
would do but actually I thought well
that's not going to tell me anything
about what books are actually read and
published inside North Korea and I'd be
interested to know that if I can so I
actually got in touch there's um there's
a guy who works for the government in
North Korea he's Spanish born and he um
went there convinced them to change the
law so that he could work there and
became a North Korean Citizen and you
can email him his job is to build ties
with the rest of the world it's quite a
tall order really but um I
I I emailed him and we had a discussion
he recommended a collection of folk
stories which he claimed were all based
in his historic fact and I thought well
let's see how how far I can push this
you know um so I said well I'm
particularly interested in contemporary
adult fiction if you can recommend
anything and he came back with a really
interesting reply he said no fiction has
been published in the whole history of
North Korea there is no such thing um
and I thought well this is strange
because I happen to know there are some
short stories some what we would call
fiction that have been published in an
anthology so I went back to him and I
said perhaps we don't mean the same
thing by fiction maybe you understand it
fabrication and actually I'm talking
about these stories like by these
writers anyway at that point Kim jongil
died and so it was a very convenient
point for him to end the
conversation however I actually ended up
reading a memoir that someone else
recommended to me by that had been
published in pongyang and it was by a
war correspondent who'd been imprisoned
in South Korea for 30 years and then
went back to the country and um of
course I had no way of knowing what had
been done to it who had edited it how
much
propaganda and that's true that's true
of every country the line between fact
and fiction Even in our own government
is sometimes blurred yeah I've only time
for one more question it's this she for
examples from Indonesia which is 20,000
Islands yes 20,000 Islands now just one
Island Java has an East and a west of
course it has a North and the South too
but the culture in the East is very
different from the West how did you deal
with that problem that some countries
are so vast that there must be entirely
different uh cultural output in one part
rather than another absolutely this
subject for a second book well perhaps
yeah well I I think that was something I
was really conscious of a lot of people
when they heard about my project said oh
you must be finding the definitive book
from each country and I said well no
because one book can't stand for a
country I would be annoyed if someone
thought they would choose the definitive
British novel so why should I say that I
can do that for anywhere else India was
perhaps the toughest example of that
because you know a nation of 1.2 billion
plus people and so many different
cultures and traditions um and actually
I ended up uh a an Indian journalist
saved me actually because I was really
struggling with what to choose from
India and she came to the blog and she
said well I notice all the
recommendations that people have made
have been for English language works but
actually to me that's second best we've
got 22 other official languages here and
amazing literature in those so one of my
favorite writers is um a writer who
writes in malayum a writer called Mt the
seed of anir and I think you should try
and find a translation of something by
him so I did but as I say one book can't
stand for a whole country well no but
your book stands for something really
important it's a very very beautiful
word reading the world and Morgan thanks
very much for coming on board the
Sputnik and now it's your turn to tell
us what you think through the portals of
social media what's rling gri well you
recall that picture of Isis driving down
in a convoy waving their Flags you know
in the Jeep with with very special
vehicles yeah Michael boy makes the
point serious question is is Isis
sponsored by Toyota or what because if
that's not product placement I don't
know what it is every picture in video
comes out and there's a fleet of brand
new
Toyotas well there's no mystery and I'm
afraid there's no conspiracy they stole
them they stole them from the Iraqi
Armed Forces which collapsed and ran
away leaving all their material behind
them and their weapons and hundreds of
millions of dollars in the banks uh they
are not short of money they can buy
anything that they want uh not least
from the looted uh Banks uh but they
stole all the crack modern material from
the Iraqi Army which had been sold at
Great profit uh to them by Western
companies and Toyota Japanese companies
and uh so on and in Syria they simply
took everything that Western countries
delivered to the so-called moderate
opposition soon as it arrived they went
in with their guns and emptied the
warehouses so Toyota are not sponsoring
them neither directly are the Western
governments sponsoring them but they are
the beneficiaries of both and Raa D says
this is democracy made in NATO well you
can't make democracy in NATO and and you
certainly can't drop it in a bomb that
much we ought to be clear of uh now well
that's all that we've got for this week
which alas means that's the end of the
show you can stay in touch with us on
Twitter at rtor Sputnik or Facebook
Sputnik on Russia today it's goodbye
from me gri and from me George Galloway
it's been marvelous
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oh