Book hunting

the limited titles at bookshops in Malaysia is deplorable.loads of self help and cook books but very little on current affairs.the same old authors are sold because the purchasing managers are not well read and have little interest beyond bestsellers. im hunting a book called Doomsday,faith,fatalism and the end of the world in the apocalyptic nuclear age by Daniel Wojcik.its odd its categorised under folklore and mythology and the writer is an academic in English and mythology.im also hunting Fareed Zakarias book on 10 lessons for a post pandemic world in which he talked about how factory farming of animals for meat led to mutation of virus that jump from animal host to human host.he also looks at how unregulated capitalism led to gross inequality of wealth and dire poverty in some of free capital markets of the world. i was viewing Ted talks when a talk by David Miliband caught my eye its on refugees and the political crisis of our time.its a pretty persuasive and convincing talk he gives.as a child of refugee parents from Poland,he wanted to find out why a local catholic farmer in Brussels se cretly gave refuge to his Polish Jewish mom and aunt at great risk to his own safety when they were summoned by the Nazis to go to a certain camp.when his aunt took him to visit their rescuer as a teenager,he asked a naive question.why had he taken such a risk for the sake of my family.his answer will always stick with me."on doit."One must.It was innate in him,part of his being to help someone in trouble. two of the most basic human value

s,without which there is no humanity,are empathy and its cousin altruism.empathy for other people simply because they are people,not because of their race,religion or politics is a basic building block of what makes civilization. so we cant look the other way and feign ignorance. Asean needs to stand up for the plight of the citizens of Myanmar for loss of democratic right to self determination as well as the rights of Ukraine citizens whose sovereignity is threatened by external invasion.as the futurist Marshall Mc Luhan said"there are no passengers on Spaceship Earth.We are all crew."and when governments fail to see the danger of a course they are on,it often requires the voluntary sector,the faith based communities,and the private sector and private citizens to take a lead. "walls in people's heads are sometimes more durable than walls made of concrete blocks." Willy Brandt.mayor of Berlin and chancellor of West Germany.