Archive - June 30, 2009

Let Them Eat Junk by Robert Albritton and published this year in the U.K. by Pluto Press and Canada by Arbeiter Ring [“left-wing politics with a rock-n- roll attitude”],  is reviewed by fellow Ethiopia 2 RPCV Philip Damon. It is an impressive review of an important book. • Let Them Eat Junk by Robert Albritton (Ethiopia 1963–65) London, UK: Pluto Press; Winnipeg, Canada: Arbeiter Ring Publishing April, 2009 224 pages Reviewed by Philip Damon (Ethiopia 1963–65) To his credit, Rob Albritton never employs the tired cliché “a perfect storm” in his acid analysis of the world’s runaway food crisis. Instead, he coyly alludes in his title to the “callous indifference” of a much earlier elite of power and privilege, whose post-royalist inheritors he specifies in the subtitle: How Capitalism Creates Hunger and Obesity. Yet he could have applied the meteorological metaphor every bit as aptly, since with a planetary population . . .