CHRIS SEARLE on Mike Westbrook who died aged 90
PERMANENT Record, Edward Snowden’s 2019 memoir, full of the seamy details of state corruption that can get a whistleblower in trouble, has just been released in a young readers’ edition.
It’s squarely aimed at a young readership and has all the stuff they love in a book — adventure, fighting tyrants, young love, righteous parental moral homilies, unspeakable mum and dad divorce, ideals turned dystopic — along with with a fascistic capitalism portrayed as a nearly indestructible cyborg.
The book follows Snowden’s childhood years through to September 11 terror attacks wake-up and how he became a whistleblower.
RON JACOBS is enthralled by an account of the surveillance and political repression on the left in the US
MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s dissection of William Blake
ALAN SIMPSON warns of a dystopian crossroads where Trump’s wrecking ball meets AI-driven alienation, and argues only a Green New Deal can repair our fractured society before techno-feudalism consumes us all



