Summary of Scott Carney & Jason Miklian's The Vortex

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Hafiz was a star of the Pakistani team, and he was hosting the Soviet team in Dacca, the Bengali capital. The crowd was divided between cheering for the Punjabi team and the Soviet team.
#2 The Pakistani team was mobbed by the Bengali crowd after their striker scored. The entire team was excited, but the Punjabi players felt something was off. They didn’t understand why the Bengalis weren’t cheering them.
#3 Hafiz’s father was the reason he was retiring from football. He wanted his son to pursue a desk job in the government’s bureaucratic elite, but Hafiz hated politics and avoided it like the plague.
#4 After the game, Hafiz was mobbed by his fans. He was proud of the small Italian scooter he had, but he was also sad that his football career was over. He took the long way back to the university, thinking about the freedom he felt riding his Vespa.

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 10 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669383444
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Scott Carney & Jason Miklian's The Vortex
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Hafiz was a star of the Pakistani team, and he was hosting the Soviet team in Dacca, the Bengali capital. The crowd was divided between cheering for the Punjabi team and the Soviet team.

#2

The Pakistani team was mobbed by the Bengali crowd after their striker scored. The entire team was excited, but the Punjabi players felt something was off. They didn’t understand why the Bengalis weren’t cheering them.

#3

Hafiz’s father was the reason he was retiring from football. He wanted his son to pursue a desk job in the government’s bureaucratic elite, but Hafiz hated politics and avoided it like the plague.

#4

After the game, Hafiz was mobbed by his fans. He was proud of the small Italian scooter he had, but he was also sad that his football career was over. He took the long way back to the university, thinking about the freedom he felt riding his Vespa.

#5

The idea of Pakistan arrived in the early 1930s, taking the political scene by storm. The name wasn’t some ancient tribal homage; it was simply an acronym for the country’s biggest provinces and ethnic groups.

#6

In 1947, the British split the subcontinent into two countries, India and Pakistan. The new country of Pakistan used the old British governing system as a blueprint for how to deal with their eastern wing a thousand miles away. They treated it like a colony, shipping in thousands of police and administrators.

#7

The major was trying to recruit Hafiz to join the army. He explained that the army would give him a steady salary and plenty of room to grow. But Hafiz didn’t see anything worth dying for.

#8

Hafiz decided to join the army, as the National Team’s paltry salaries could not support a family. The army was an honorable profession, and the money was regular enough to start a family.

#9

Pakistan’s president, Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan, was a man of action. He could accomplish any task with the efficiency and unswerving nerve that had been cemented into him from a childhood raised in police stations and then through his decades of military service.

#10

In 1965, Pakistan saw its first strategic edge in a generation. It invaded Kashmir, and India responded by putting harsh military and economic sanctions on Pakistan. The countries began to clash again, and Pakistan found a new friend in China.

#11

After the American sanctions hit Pakistan hard, citizens grew tired of Ayub’s authoritarianism. In 1969, riots broke out over his corrupt rule. Yahya, the man who would become Pakistan’s president, was given the task of holding an election that would bring democracy to the country.

#12

Nixon had a soft spot for Pakistan, and he wanted to help them get a democracy up and running. He agreed to visit Pakistan in August, at which point they would proclaim their friendship through an arms deal masquerading as a humanitarian aid package.

#13

Candy went to the bazaar in Dacca to look for wedding gifts. She walked past a row of jewelers who could turn giant conch shells dredged from the Ganges delta into elaborate wedding bangles for Hindu brides.

#14

As she made her way back to the entrance, Candy thought back to six months earlier. She and Jon had been sitting at the kitchen table in their small apartment in Boston’s Back Bay, flipping page by page through an old atlas and plotting their escape to a place where the authorities could never bother them.

#15

Candy and Jon were eventually able to get out of the draft by going to work for a cholera lab in East Pakistan. They spent months there, and Candy was able to find her calling in Dacca.

#16

Candy loved her house in Dacca. It was a small but modern flat, and she was surrounded by trees instead of trash. She was home.

#17

Nixon was fascinated by China, and thought it was time to break the American embargo and establish diplomatic and economic relations with the country. However, he didn’t have access to anyone in Mao’s inner circle.

#18

Nixon made Yahya an offer he couldn’t refuse: weapons in exchange for a meeting with Mao. The dinner was a celebration, and Nixon began his toast by praising his Pakistani friend.

#19

After the meeting, Nixon wrote that Yahya was a real leader, and that the two of them launching rockets to Mars together wasn’t such a crazy idea after all.

#20

The National Hurricane Center was a center that collected images of developing weather systems and gave early warnings to the places they might hit. It was a laborious process, but the best technology available at the time.

#21

The NHC, the most technically sophisticated storm-tracking facility in the world, had a satellite dish on its roof. The center’s hub was an octagonal room where half a dozen men put up hand-drawn charts, grainy radar images, and other breaking-weather events from around the world on backlit displays.

#22

The NHC was supposed to be a bulwark against environmental destruction, but in reality, it was helping the government secure American interests.

#23

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association, which was in charge of studying weather conditions across continents, was about to launch the most advanced weather tracker into geosynchronous orbit. The ITOS 1 satellite would transmit real-time weather imaging from its polar orbit.

#24

General Rani was working the party, looking for a mark. She spotted the mark of a lifetime: a blind-drunk general with swaying medals who clanked as he walked. On the eleventh trip, Yahya Khan stopped to say hello.

#25

Rani, the madam, and Yahya, the military general, became close friends. Rani was able to connect him with the country’s top politicians and singers.

#26

In Islamabad, Yahya built a modern city without a single corruption scandal. He then spent his money on women, which made the rest of Pakistan’s senior officials jealous.

#27

When Ayub gave the presidency to Yahya, the prostitues and madams were so entrenched in his circle that he even promoted some of them to official positions. He treated politics like war and bonded with Mujibur Rahman, the head of the Awami League, whom he considered an annoyance.

#28

Yahya began to delegate responsibilities to his advisers, and even Rani, his wife. He would never delegate his friendship with Richard Nixon, though.

#29

Hafiz was excited to play in the Iran vs. Pakistan friendly round-robin tournament, which was meant to support the regional economic alliance between the two countries. He was happy to be playing for the National Team instead of the Army Team.

#30

The team played their second game against an even better team than the one that had wiped them out the day before. Captain Qadir Baksh, a midfielder with whom Hafiz had played ever since the Dacca days, mangled his knee when an Iranian striker came in for a slide tackle.

#31

The team was about to get obliterated by Pakistan, but Hafiz led with his foot and scored the team’s only goal. As captain, he also led with his heart and voice. The team came together as a team, and without hope of winning, they attacked Turkey’s defenses relentlessly.

#32

Hai’s family would go out on pontoon boats and catch catfish, which they would then sell to the local market. Manpura was a small island off the coast of East Pakistan, and it was a disconnected place where people would gossip about the news.