The Burning Archive

Did the fall of Rome lead to the birth of Europe, Christendom and Western civilisation? This episode of The Burning Archive answers - What was the Roman Empire? What was it like before it fell? Why was it significant and still matters to us today. In Part I Jeff Rich sets out the story arc of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and sets the scene for a more detailed discussion of why it fell and its legacy in Part II. Full references to the material in the show are provided at www.theburningarchive.com.

Join the The Burning Archive Podcast for a special feature on the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature, and learn not only about the hushed excitement of the winner (sshh no spoilers), but the history of the prize, favourite winners, best losers, and most contentious scandals. Congratulations to Abdulrazak Gurnah, and thanks to nobelprize.org.

Vaclav Havel was a Czech writer and dissident who later became, after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the President of his country. This episode continues the The Burning Archive podcast's commemoration of his writing, ideas and the model of his way of living in truth remains meaningful to us today. This episode looks at the essays, "The Power of the Powerless" (1978), "Six Asides about Culture" (1984), and "Politics and Conscience" (1984), the memoir, To the Castle and Back, and Havel's work for a better world after leaving the Czech Presidency in 2003. Please share, subscribe and leave a positive review if you liked it. More details on material referred to and used in the episode is available at www.theburningarchive.com - where you can read more of my writing on all things history and culture.

Vaclav Havel was a Czech writer and dissident who later became, after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the President of his country. This episode of The Burning Archive podcast explores how his writing, ideas and the model of his way of living in truth remains meaningful to us today. This episode sets out the main events of Havel's life and the ideas of his political essay. It looks in depth at the "Letter to Gustav Husak" (1975), and its uncanny evocation of aspects of our lives today in a locked down world. More details on the material referred to during the show will be available at www.theburningarchive.com.

The fall of Kabul has raised questions for Australia about the reliability of its alliance with the United States of America. For Australians this capitulation evokes comparisons with another decisive imperial humiliation, the fall of Singapore in 1942. The conquest by Japan of the fortress of the British Empire in South East Asia in the weeks following the attack on Pearl Harbour, led the then Australian Prime Minister to turn decisively from the declining British Empire that could not longer secure Australia's defence to the rising American Empire. Will the fall of Kabul and the rise of Eurasia provoke the same questioning of foreign policy by Australia? Full credits and references to materials quoted in this episode will be posted to www.theburningarchive.com shortly. Please share and subscribe and read more of my writing at The Burning archive blog - www.theburningarchive.com. Credits, very brief excerpt from Midnight Oil, US Forces.

America’s defeat in Afghanistan has provoked an imperial crisis. This imperial crisis is not just a geostrategic or diplomatic game. It is a crisis of the ideas driving the empire - American culture, society and politics - its core belief that it is the exceptional nation. In Kabul America unwittingly surrendered not only as occupier of Afghanistan, but its claim to be leader of the so-called free world. Will Afghanistan teach America to be humble again or at last? That is the question for today’s Burning Archive, when Jeff Rich discusses the American response to its humiliation in Afghanistan. Jeff Rich is a writer, historian, podcaster, poet, and presents The Burning Archive podcast about all things history and culture - where the past is never dead - the past is not even past, and where by thinking about the past we try to live better in the present. Full details on material referenced in this week's show (there is a lot) will be posted at www.theburningarchive.com

America's capitulation in Afghanistan has provoked an humanitarian disaster, an imperial crisis, and a change in the balance of power between great states in Eurasia. The crisis is still unfolding but has revealed the growing connections and interests of the Eurasian states in a new world order, separate from Atlantic domination. This episode of The Burning Archive Podcast examines how Afghanistan's neighbours and the great states of Eurasia are responding to the situation, and how it shows the Silk Roads are rising again. Credits and material referred to during the show: International Crisis Group, With the Taliban Back in Kabul, Regional Powers Watch and Wait, Commentary 26 August 2021,  https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asia/afghanistan/taliban-back-kabul-regional-powers-watch-and-wait Ibrahim Bahiss, analyst at International Crisis Group, https://twitter.com/Afghan_Policy/status/1431812887832514564 Putin, Xi Make Thinly Veiled Criticisms of US Over Afghanistan and COVID-19 Origin Tracing, Statecraft Bulletin, https://www.statecraft.co.in/article/putin-xi-make-thinly-veiled-criticisms-of-us-over-afghanistan-and-covid-19 Wang Yi Blinken 29 AQUgust 2021 https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1902967.shtml Afghan 'tragedy' shows EU needs geopolitical muscle: Borrell, https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210822-afghan-tragedy-shows-eu-needs-geopolitical-muscle-borrell Lavrov comments, 27 August 2021, https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/4847771 Russia, China should communicate with new Afghan authorities independently from US: Russian scholar, Global Times, 31 August 2021, https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1233008.shtml Peter Frankopan, Silk Roads: a new history of the world (2017) The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/   Ezra Pound reading from Canto 81. Read more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com including my posts related to Afghanistan - The fall of the American Empire’s Potemkin Province, and The World Island vs the Atlantic. Buy my new book - Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020 in print and e-book editions at major online retailers.

America's capitulation in Afghanistan has provoked an humanitarian disaster, an imperial crisis, and a change in the balance of power between great states in Eurasia. The crisis threatens not only American prestige in the world but some of the basic historical and strategic ideas undergirding American geostrategy for the last fifty years. The Burning Archive explains the persistence in America's disastrous Afghanistan adventure of the ideas of Halford Mackinder about the "World Island" of Eurasia and and of former USA National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski about the imperatives for America to control Central and West Asia. Credits: Halford Mackinder "The Geographical Pivot of History" (1904) Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997) William Dalrymple, Return of a King: the Battle for Afghanistan 1838-42 (2013) The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/  Ezra Pound reading from Canto 81. Read more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com including my posts related to Afghanistan - The fall of the American Empire’s Potemkin Province, and The World Island vs the Atlantic. Buy my new book - Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020 in print and e-book editions at major online retailers. Check out me reading poems from the book at The Burning Archive Youtube channel

In this episode of the Burning Archive, Jeff Rich completes his 12 part thematic history of our times. Historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto writes about the impact of accelerating change on society over the last 50 years: “Under the surface of political and economic change lurks fear of instability in the most precious sources of identity.” He puts his finger on the change the Burning Archive has been describing as social fragmentation: Social Change + Identity Impacts + Technological Amplification + Cultural Viruses = profound uncertainty about who we are. In this episode, the Burning Archive asks: What happens to a society when we change everything, even change itself? Can we cope with the accelerating pace of change? Credits: * Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, A Foot in the River: Why our Lives Change and the Limits of Evolution (2015)  * Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, 2017 Bryn Lecture "Change How History Happens,” * Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, "Human Beings: Dedicated to Interrupting Evolution", Oxford Illustrated History of the World * The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/ * Ezra Pound reading from Canto 81. Read more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com or buy my new book - Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020 in print and e-book editions at major online retailers. Check out me reading poems from the book at The Burning Archive Youtube channel

In this episode of The Burning Archive, Jeff Rich continues his history of our times, and the theme of increasing social fragmentation. If there is more distance between the elites and ordinary people - the 1 % vs the 99 % - then that can lead to conflict, social breakdown, even revolution. But social fragmentation can also be destructive when it occurs among the top 10 % who really, really want to be in the top 1 percent of positions of high social status. What happens to a society when the elites turn on themselves? Conflict, though is not our only choice. We can reach across the fissures of our fragmented society, and build bridges between the separated islands of our society. Along the way, this episode explores the Yellow Vest movement in France, the Occupy movement in Wall St, Jo Scarborough's rant on American exceptionalism, Peter Turchin, Simon Schama, the French and Russian Revolutions, the atrocities of the Vendée, and even protests in London against lockdowns. Credits: * The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/ * Ezra Pound reading from Canto 81. Read more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com or buy my new book - Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020 in print and e-book editions at major online retailers. Check out me reading poems from the book at The Burning Archive Youtube channel