Roach is the author of Stiff, a raucous romp through the wonderful land of death. It is only natural that she might continue that escapade with a lookRoach is the author of Stiff, a raucous romp through the wonderful land of death. It is only natural that she might continue that escapade with a look past the curtain. Are there ghosts? Is there life after death? She examines a host of topics under her conceptual umbrella, looking at reincarnation, the hunt for the seat of the soul, the notion that the soul weighs 21 grams, ectoplasm, the effectiveness of mediums, including her stint in medium school, (she outgrew small but was not yet advanced enough for large school?) EVP, and more. As with Stiff, it is a bit hazardous reading this in public as one is apt to burst out into laughter every now and then, victimized by the snide commentary that makes this book great fun to read. I particularly enjoyed the section on the possibility that infrasound, that is, sound at or about 18-20 decibels, might account for a wide range of supposedly psychic experience. Spook has enough payload to justify the trip and the humor makes it a very spirited ride.
This is a delightful screed on the demise of punctuation in contemporary expression. Truss bemoans the loss o[image] Lynne Truss - image from Alchetron
This is a delightful screed on the demise of punctuation in contemporary expression. Truss bemoans the loss of knowledge or of interest in proper use of language. Truss is a Brit and the usages have not been modified for the American edition of the book. This is a must, an enjoyable and educational read for anyone who cares about the English language. In addition to gripes about the slovenly way that we write, Truss offers some history on punctuation, which is most welcome....more
This is a remarkable work, decades in the making. Perkins is the real deal, an economist who worked for international consortia to pillage the third wThis is a remarkable work, decades in the making. Perkins is the real deal, an economist who worked for international consortia to pillage the third world. The modus operandi was to perform economic analysis of target nations that indicated a rate of growth far in excess of any real possibility in order to justify offering those nations huge loans, loans they were never expected to be able to repay. The point of this was twofold. First, the money loaned would find its way right back into the pocket of American corporations, because it would be used for major construction projects, roads, dams, electrification projects. The economic benefits would never accrue as predicted, so the host country would be saddled with crushing debt and then be forced by entities like the IMF to slash and burn domestic social services in order to make interest payments. The benefits of the “development” would go to the elite of the host nations, at the expense of the lower classes. In fact, he offers data showing that poverty increased over the term of such foreign investment. Local elites were essentially bribed to go along, and they in turn acted as enforcers for the American elite that was pushing the product.
John Perkins began as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador. He managed rather well with this experience and was recruited by a corporate type into the MAIN corporation, the actor in most of the hit man activity. In fact the title was not a case of advocacy hyperbole. The people in this line of work actually refer to each other and themselves as Economic Hit Men, or EHM’s.
I learned several things in reading this. First was that conquest via excessive indebtedness was a conscious policy, with the short term profitability of development by Bechtel or equivalent being icing on the cake of overall domination.
I learned about SAMA, or the Saudi Arabia Money-Laundering Affair. Perkins talks about several of the leaders he came to know, Trujillo in Panama, Jaime Roldos in Ecuador, other leaders of less-than-presidential caliber.
P 15 My job…was to forecast the effects of investing billions of dollars in a country. Specifically, I would produce studies that projected economic growth twenty to twenty five years into the future and that evaluated the impacts of various projects. For example, if a decision was made to lend a country $1 billion to persuade its leaders not to align with the Soviet union, I would compare the benefits of investing that money in power plants with the benefits of investing in a new national railroad network or a telecommunications system. Or I might be told that the country was being offered the opportunity to receive a modern electric utility system, and it would be up to me to demonstrate that such a system would result in sufficient economic growth to justify the loan. The critical factor, in every case, was gross national product. The project that resulted in the highest average annual growth of GNP won. If only one project was under consideration, I would need to demonstrate that developing it would bring superior benefits to the GNP.
The unspoken aspect of every one of these projects was that they were intended to create large profits for the contractors, and to make a handful of wealthy and influential families in the receiving countries very happy, while assuring the long-term financial dependence and therefore political loyalty of governments around the world. The larger the loan, the better. The fact that the debt burden placed on a country would deprive its poorest citizens of health, education and other social services for decades to come was not taken into consideration.
P 16 …talked about the deceptive nature of GNP. For instance, the growth of GNP may result even when it profits only one person, such as an individual who owns a utility company, and even if the majority of the population is burdened with debt. The rich get richer and the poor grow poorer. Yet from a statistical standpoint, this is recorded as economic progress.
…Over the years, I’ve repeatedly heard comments like, “If they’re going to burn the U.S. flag and demonstrate against our embassy, why don’t we just get out of their damn country and let them wallow in their own poverty?”
People who say such things often hold diplomas certifying that they are well educated. However, these people have no clue that the main reason we establish embassies around the world is to serve our own interests, which during the last half of the twentieth century meant turning the American republic into a global empire. Despite credentials, such people are as uneducated as those eighteenth century colonists who believed that Indians fighting to defend their lands were servants of the devil.
P 17 [quoting his teacher Claudine] “We’re in a small, exclusive club,” she said. “We’re paid—well paid—to cheat countries around the globe out of billions of dollars. A large part of your job is to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U.S. commercial interests. In the end, those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty. We can draw on them whenever we desire—to satisfy our political, economic, or military needs. In turn, these leaders bolster their political position by bringing industrial parks, power plants, and airports to their people. Meanwhile, the owners of U.S. engineering and construction companies become very wealthy.
P 23 [The source of the Boogey man image appears to be Indonesia. Apparently there were pirates from a place called Bugi.] …the infamous Bugi pirates, who still sailed the seas of the archipelago, and who had so terrorized early European sailors that they returned home to warn their children, “Behave yourselves or the Bugimen will get you.”
P 49 ..I knew enough history to know that suppliers who are exploited long enough will rebel. I had only to return to the American Revolution and Tom Paine for a model. I recalled that Britain justified its taxes by claiming that England was providing aid to the colonies in the form of military protection against the French and the Indians. The colonists had a very different interpretation.
What Paine offered to his countrymen in the brilliant Common Sense was the soul that my young Indonesian friends had referred to—an idea, a faith in the justice of a higher power, and a religion of freedom and equality that was diametrically opposed to the British monarchy and its elitist class systems. What Muslims offered was similar: faith in a higher power, and a belief that developed countries have no right to subjugate and exploit the rest of the world. Like colonial Minutemen, Muslims were threatening to fight for their rights, and like the British in the 1770s, we classified such actions as terrorism.
P 58 Panama was part of Columbia when the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps, who directed construction f the Suez Canal, decided to build a canal through the Central American isthmus, to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Beginning in 1881, the French undertook a mammoth effort that met with one catastrophe after another. Finally, in 1889, the project ended in financial disaster—but it had inspired a dream in Theodore Roosevelt. During the first years of the twentieth century, the United States demanded that Colombia sign a treaty turning the isthmus over to a North American consortium. Colombia refused.
In 1903, President Roosevelt sent in the U.S. warship Nashville. U.S. soldiers landed, seized and killed a popular local militia commander, and declared Panama an independent nation. A puppet government was installed and the first Canal Treaty was signed; it established an American zone on both sides of the future waterway, legalized U.S. military intervention, and gave Washington virtual control over this newly formed “independent” nation.
…the treaty was not signed by a single Panamanian.
P 72 – re Guatemala United Fruit Company had been [Guatemala’s] equivalent to the Panama Canal. Founded in the late 1800s, United Fruit soon grew into one of the most powerful forces in Central America. During the early 1950s, reform candidate Jacobo Arbenz was elected president of Guatemala in an election hailed all over the hemisphere as a model of the democratic process. At the time, less than 3 percent pf Guatemalans owned 70 percent of the land. Arbenz promised to help the poor dig their way out of starvation, and after his election he implemented a comprehensive land reform program…United Fruit launched a major public relations campaign in the United States, aimed at convincing the American public and congress that Arbenz was part of a Russian plot and that Guatemala was a Soviet satellite. In 1954, the CIA orchestrated a coup. American pilots bombed Guatemala city and the democratically elected Arbenz was overthrown, replaced by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, a ruthless, right-wing dictator.
Thje new government owed everything to United Fruit. By way of thanks, the government reversed the land reform process, abolished taxes on the interest and dividends paid to foreign investors, eliminated the secret ballot, and jailed thousands of its critics. Anyone who dared to speak out against Castillo was persecuted.
[Torrijos then asks Perkins] “Do you know who owns United Fruit?” “Zapata Oil, George Bush’s company—our UN ambassador.”
Cobra II is a major work. It is in this that it is made eminently clear that it is Rummy who was in charge of troop numbers. He pressured the generalsCobra II is a major work. It is in this that it is made eminently clear that it is Rummy who was in charge of troop numbers. He pressured the generals, particularly Franks, to reduce the numbers over and over and over again until the General(s), knowing what was good for him/them, acceded.
The war itself was fraught with miscommunications, incompatibilities and wildly inaccurate assumptions. In one instance several Air Force bombers were unable to make it all the way back home from their mission because their refueling connections were incompatible with the system in use on the Navy tanker planes. Many more such FUBAR moments are portrayed here....more
“There is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America. Only law ensures that we never fall into that abyss—the abyss from which there is no retu“There is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America. Only law ensures that we never fall into that abyss—the abyss from which there is no return.” (p 344)
Bamford’s turf is the NSA and he mines that lode again. This time with an eye towards how the gathering of intelligence changed from a focused peering into the doings of potential enemies abroad to spying on the doings of everyone, American or not, in the USA or outside. It is a chilling account of how fear-mongering and a near complete disregard for the law have been used to take us to a dangerous brink. Every phone call, every e-mail, every time. Nothing is off-limits for today’s info-gatherers.
Bamford goes into the detail. He describes in fine detail the many bits of information that were available re the 9/11 hijackers who were training in the United States, and explains how it came to be that that critical information never made it to the people who might have used it. While our capacity to collect intelligence may have mushroomed, our ability to shoot ourselves in the foot with political and turf wars remains problematic.
His tale is not one of criticism alone. He makes important points about the difficulties involved in managing intelligence, the challenge of coping with new, vast quantities, the political issues significant in limiting communication between the NSA and other departments, and notes many decisions that were made by the Bush Administration that relegated constitutional privacy protection meaningless.
The government cannot invade our privacy alone. It must rely on the cooperation of private market info-carriers. So, it asks, coerces carriers to allow the NSA to tap into their lines, their routers, their connection to all and sundry data pipes. The carriers are occasionally reluctant, fearful of lawsuits, but the government usually insists. Bamford cites a 1994 federal statute, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) that requires communications companies to engineer their facilities so that their network can be easily monitored. (p 210-11)
Alarmingly several of the companies heavily involved in new spying technology for the USA have significant ties to foreign governments, most particularly to Israel. It is not a stretch to say that as a result of this, what we hear, they hear also. Government restrictions on foreign entities being involved in US spying do not extend to private companies, a major loophole.
Another legal loophole applies to limitations on the US right to spy on American citizens in the US. The government has arranged with foreign intel services to do it for us.
Bamford marks his trail through these shadowy woods with many, many crumbs. At times it seems that there is too much detail. But it is all in a worthy cause. It is important to see, line by line, what happened, what information was available, where it went and what happened with it, step by step by step. It is important for us all to know what our government is up to, what lines it is willing to cross, and maybe, just maybe, by casting some light on these dark recesses, Americans who care about preserving our freedoms can begin to address these dark impulses. For who can doubt that such tools will be used to stifle dissent at home as they are used for that purpose abroad?
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GR friend Jan Rice sent along an excellent article from the May 23, 2011 issue of The New Yorker magazine. Titled The Secret Sharer, it tells the terrible tale of an NSA whistle-blower who fell afoul of our military-industrial-intelligence complex. Making it clearer once again that there is no law, only power, and we are right to be concerned, very concerned about our loss of privacy.
February 1, 2016 - Bamford's latest article in Foreign Affairs looks at foreign nations buying advanced spyware on the open market. Scary stuff - The Espionage Economy ...more
This was real page turner. Will Monroe, Jr. is a twenty-something reporter with the New York Times who has stumbled onto something odd. Someone is kilThis was real page turner. Will Monroe, Jr. is a twenty-something reporter with the New York Times who has stumbled onto something odd. Someone is killing righteous men all across the planet. While investigating this, Monroe encounters troubling forces in Brooklyn’s Hassidic community, and ultimately uncovers a plot based in obscure religious belief, effected by a surprising cast of villains. Oh yeah, his wife is kidnapped by the Hassids and he is pursued by the evil-doers. It is Da-Vinci-Code-fun to read, one I was loath to put down. This is a top notch summer read....more
This is one of the great ones. Capote blankets Holcomb, Kansas with his curiosity. The root of this wor[image] Truman Capote - image from the NY Post
This is one of the great ones. Capote blankets Holcomb, Kansas with his curiosity. The root of this work is a ghastly crime. Two recently released convicts, seeking a fortune that did not exist, invade the Clutter family home, tie up the four family members present and leave no witnesses. It takes some time for the perpetrators to be identified, then tracked down. Capote looks at how the townspeople react to this. Many, fearful that one of their own was responsible, become withdrawn. How do people mourn? He looks at the sequence of investigation that leads ultimately to the capture of the suspects, focusing on one of the chief investigators. He looks in depth at the criminals. What makes them tick? How could people do such awful things? In reading this I was reminded of some of the great panoramic art works of a bygone age, works by Bosch, or Breughel, in which entire towns were brought together into one wide-screen image. This is what Capote has done. But even with all the territory he covers there is considerable depth. I was also reminded, for an entirely different reason of Thomas Hardy. Capote has an incredible gift for language. He writes beautifully, offering descriptions that can bring to tears anyone who truly loves language. It has the power of poetry. This is truly a classic, a book that defined a new genre of literature. If you haven’t read it, you must.
[image] Murderers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith - image from ABC Australia
The author asks “Why have a conscience?” She argues that being truly human entails having one, and warns the majority of us about the four percent of The author asks “Why have a conscience?” She argues that being truly human entails having one, and warns the majority of us about the four percent of people who are sociopaths. This is a chilling book. I have met people who fit her description. One need not be a serial killer to be a sociopath. One needs only to be immune to caring about the humanity of others.
P 3 It chafes to be so free of the ridiculous inner voice that inhibits others from achieving great power, without having enough talent to pursue the ultimate successes yourself. Sometimes you fall into sulky, rageful moods caused by frustration that no one but you understands.
But you do jobs that afford you a certain undersupervised control over a few individuals or small groups, preferably people and groups who are relatively helpless or in some way vulnerable. You are a teacher or a psychotherapist, a divorce lawyer or a high school coach. Or maybe you are a consultant of some kind, a broker or a gallery owner or a human services director…Whatever your job, you manipulate and bully the people who are under your thumb, as often and as outrageously as you can without getting fired or held accountable. You do this for its own sake, even when it serves no purpose except to give you a thrill. Making people jump means you have power—or this is the way you see it—and bullying provides you with an adrenaline rush. It is fun…Maybe you cannot be a CEO of a multinational corporation, but you can frighten a few people, or cause them to scurry around like chickens, or steal from them, or—maybe best of all—create situations that cause them to feel bad about themselves. And this is power, especially when the people you manipulate are superior to you in some way. Most invigorating of all is to bring down people who are smarter or more accomplished than you, or perhaps classier, more attractive or popular or morally admirable. This is not only good fun; it is existential vengeance. And without a conscience it is amazingly easy to do. ...more
This is a major work. Diamond looks in detail at the factors at play in the demise of civilizations in human history, using a wide range of examples. This is a major work. Diamond looks in detail at the factors at play in the demise of civilizations in human history, using a wide range of examples. He offers a framework in which to structure the analysis and looks in great detail at possible (and in many cases certain) reasons why various societies collapsed. He is not a one-note analyst. All problems do not fit the same mold. There is considerable nuance and common sense brought to bear on this examination. Foolishness plays a part, greed, corruption. But just as frequently, the actors behave rationally. Maybe they were unaware or could not possibly be aware of the larger implications of their actions. Maybe the land in which they lived was ill-suited to large numbers of humans. Maybe changes in climate made what seemed a reasonable place a death trap. Clearly an analysis of why societies failed in the past, with particular attention to environmental issues, has direct relevance to our world today. For example, Polynesian islands that were dependant on resources from other islands collapsed when their import supply dried up. That has relevance to oil-dependant first world nations today, for example. Diamond goes out of his way to make a case that business is business and they are not in the business of performing charity or taking responsibility for the common weal. He does point out that some businesses have been instrumental in forcing improvements in producers. He cited Home Depot and BP among others, although I expect he might have second thoughts about the latter's net impact.
I found the book to be extremely eye-opening and informative. It was a long, slow read, but well worth the effort. It makes my short list of must read for anyone seriously interested in current affairs. ...more
This is a very alarming portrait of some of the darkest forces at work in America, or anywhere for that matter. Hedges argues that the extreme wing ofThis is a very alarming portrait of some of the darkest forces at work in America, or anywhere for that matter. Hedges argues that the extreme wing of the contemporary Christian movement in the US shares much with the actions and worldview of other historical fascist movements, movements that often mask the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and their willingness to make concessions only until they achieved unrivaled power. There is little in here that I was not aware of, as far as the overall goals of the Christo-fascists, but as he explores some of the details it was illuminating, and even more disturbing than I had already realized.
He describes how a dominionist-based ideology is at the root of a radical movement that seeks to shred the barriers between church and state. The new radical churchies would have been familiar to George Orwell, with the attempt to redefine our very language to their sinister purposes. They are systematically attempting to subvert the root institutions and beliefs of America, intent on ushering in a theocratic state, disenfranchising any who object, attacking the other, whether for sexual or religious preference. He points out how the leaders of this movement have evacuated core Christianity of its meaning, substituting inside the false cover of the Christian name a core of exclusion, violence, victimization, and dehumanization that is very much worth fearing.
There is a reasonable swath of examples from which to choose here. Perhaps I am picking nits, but I felt that, while his take was compelling, I would have been more impressed with more detailed, point by point comparison of contemporary and historical movement actions. Also, the information seemed more anecdotal than scientific. Maybe that might have been addressed by referring to other, more precise, less popular works that detailed the trend by the numbers. But, overall, Hedges makes a compelling and very alarming case that there is considerable darkness afoot and all who value core American values like separation of church and state and the first amendment would do well to pay attention, and take action where possible.
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-----May 26, 2018 - NY Times - A Christian Nationalist Blitz – by Katherine Stewart - An alarming report on the place where activist faith meets fascism
-----December 31, 2018 - NY Times - Why Trump Reigns as King Cyrus - by Katherine Stewart - a very frightening look at how the evangelical right views Trump and justifies his many crimes
================================QUOTES P 10 America and the Christian religions have no monopoly on goodness or saintliness. God has not chosen Americans as a people above others. The beliefs of Christians are as flawed and imperfect as all religious beliefs. But both the best of American democracy and the best of Christianity embody important values, values such as compassion, tolerance and belief in justice and equality. America is a nation where all have a voice in how we live and how we are governed. We have never fully adhered to these values—indeed, probably never will—but our health as a country is determined by our steadfastness in striving to attain them. And there are times when taking a moral stance, perhaps the highest form of patriotism, means facing down the community, even the nation. Our loyalty to our community and our nation, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “is therefore morally tolerable only if it includes values wider than those of the community.”
These values, democratic and Christian, are being dismantled, often with stealth, by a radical Christian movement, known as dominionism, which seeks to cloak itself in the mantle of the Christian faith and American patriotism…Dominionism seeks to redefine traditional democratic and Christian terms and concepts to fit an ideology that calls on the radical church to take political power. It shares many prominent features with classical fascist movements, at least as it is defined by the scholar Robert O. Paxton, who sees fascism as “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cultures of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
P 13 While traditional fundamentalism shares many of the darker traits of the new national movement—such as blind obedience to a male hierarchy that often claims to speak for god, intolerance toward nonbelievers, and a disdain for rational, intellectual inquiry—it has never attempted to impose its belief system on the rest of the nation. And it has not tried to transform government, as well as all other secular institutions, into extensions of the church. The new radical fundamentalism amounts to a huge and disastrous mutation. Dominionists and their wealthy, right-wing sponsors speak in terms and phrases that are familiar and comforting to most Americans, but they no longer use words to mean what they meant in the past. They engage in a slow process of “logicide,” the killing of words. The old definitions of words are replaced by new ones. Code words of the old belief system are deconstructed and assigned diametrically opposed meanings. Words such as “truth,” “Wisdom,” “Death”, “Liberty,” “Life” and “death” mean life in Christ or death to Christ, and are used to signal belief or unbelief in the risen Lord. “Wisdom” has little to do with human wisdom but refers to the level of commitment and obedience to the system of belief. “Liberty” is not about freedom, but the “liberty” found when one accepts Jesus Christ and is liberated from the world to obey Him. But perhaps the most pernicious distortion comes with the word “love,” the word used to lure into the movement many who seek a warm, loving community to counter their isolation and alienation. “Love” is distorted to mean an unquestioned obedience to those who claim to speak for God in return for the promise of everlasting life. The blind, human love, the acceptance of the other, is attacked as an inferior love, dangerous and untrustworthy.
P 21 Dominionists wait only for a fiscal, social or political crisis, a moment of upheaval in the form of an economic meltdown or another terrorist strike on American soil, to move to reconfigure the political system. Such a crisis could unleash a public clamor for drastic new national security measures and draconian reforms to safeguard the nation. Widespread discontent and fear, stoked and manipulated by dominionists and their sympathizers, could be used by these radicals to sweep aside objections of beleaguered moderates in Congress and the courts, those clinging to a bankrupt and discredited liberalism, to establish an American theocracy, a Christian fascism.
P 28 The movement is fueled by fear of powerful external and internal enemies whose duplicity and cunning is constantly at work. These phantom enemies serve to keep believers afraid and in a state of constant alert, ready to support repressive measures against all who do not embrace the movement. But this tactic has required the airbrushing out of past racists creeds—an effort that, sometime after 1970, saw Jerry Falwell recall all copies of his earlier sermons warning against integration and the evils of the black race.
P 36 Those in the movement now fight, fueled by the rage of the dispossessed, to crush and silence the reality-based world. The dominionist movement is the response of people trapped in a deformed, fragmented and disoriented culture that had become callous and unforgiving, a culture that has too often failed to provide the belonging, care and purpose that make life bearable, a culture that, as many in the movement like to say, has become a “culture of death.” The new utopians are not always wrong in their critique of American society. But what they have set out to create is far, far worse than what we endure. What is happening in America is revolutionary. A group of religious utopians, with the sympathy and support of millions of Americans, are slowly dismantling democratic institutions to establish a religious tyranny, the springboard to an American fascism.
P 151 [people] who do not conform to the ideology are gradually dehumanized. They are tainted with the despised characteristics inherent in the godless. This attack is waged in highly abstract terms, to negate the reality of concrete, specific and unique human characteristics, to deny the possibility of goodness in those who do not conform. Some human beings, the message goes, are no longer human beings. They are types. This new, exclusive community fosters rigidity, conformity and intolerance. In this new binary world segments of the human race are disqualified from moral and ethical consideration. And because fundamentalist followers live in a binary universe, they are incapable of seeing others as anything more than inverted reflections of themselves. If they seek to destroy nonbelievers to create a Christian America, then nonbelievers muse be seeking to destroy them. This belief system negates the possibility of the ethical life. It fails to grasp that goodness must be sought outside the self and that the best defense against evil is to seek it within. When people come to believe that they are immune from evil, that there is no resemblance between themselves and those they define as the enemy, they will inevitably grow to embody the evil they claim to fight. It is only by grasping our own capacity for evil, our own darkness, that we hold our own capacity for evil at bay. When evil is always external, then moral purification always entails the eradication of others....more
This was a very illuminating work about how chaotic situations are used, and sometimes created, as cover for the imposition of drastic economic and po This was a very illuminating work about how chaotic situations are used, and sometimes created, as cover for the imposition of drastic economic and political reorganization in vulnerable economies. The end product of these actions is a so-called free market model as advocated by the Chicago School of Milton Friedman and his acolytes. Examples used include Chile, China, Argentina, Bolivia, South Africa, Russia, among others. The technique is for western financial powers to swoop in during a time of financial crisis and refuse to lend a struggling nation any money until that nation agrees to a radical reworking of its economy. This reworking is done in a shock, with many changes instituted all at once, with little or no warning. These changes, as they are draconian toward the lower classes, usually need to be accompanied by severe political repression in order to enforce the transition. What we see here is the mechanism of a growing form of corporatist colonialism.
Klein parallels her examination of the stresses endured by many national economies with a look at actual, literal, personal shock treatment. In the 1950s a researcher named Ewan Cameron did research on his theory that instead of Freudian therapy a more effective method of treating mental illness was to erase the patient’s personality using electric shocks. Then the blank page would be receptive to reconstruction by the good doctor. The shocks caused amnesia and extreme regression. Cameron devised a new tool, one that applied six shocks at once, and even used a wide range of drugs to disorient and wipe clean as much of the patient’s personality as possible. Once the subject was reduced to a vegetative state, Cameron played them tapes dozens, maybe hundreds of times over. The CIA took note and launched a program of its own.
She posits a parallel between treatments that serve to erase personality with the economic and political shocks that struggling nations are forced to endure, shocks that are part and parcel of the move from a developmentalist economy, one that seeks local control and self-sufficiency, to a globalist economy, one in which foreign investment in and ownership of local enterprise is encouraged.
While I found that at times Klein extended her discourse beyond the reach of her material, her analysis of the subject matter is compelling, her linkage of different forms of shock (personal, political, economic) illuminating, and the applicability of her work to the current economic disruptions frightening. Despite its subject matter, this a compelling, and relatively fast read. It should be mandatory reading for anyone concerned with politics, economics, world affairs or current events.
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August 4, 2011 - the following article has particular relevance not only for the international implementation of TSD, but to its application within the USA. It is an interview with Dr. Michael Hudson, a guy who has been ahead of the curve for a long time on the roots of current economic atrocities.
June 18, 2012 - Joe Nocera's NY Times column on how ALEC-based programs are gutting democracy in Rhode Island ...more
Preston looks at the very tallest trees on our planet and the people who seek them out, climb them and study them. This was a very engaging trip into Preston looks at the very tallest trees on our planet and the people who seek them out, climb them and study them. This was a very engaging trip into a very unfamiliar territory. One amazing thing was that knowledge of the whereabouts of earth’s wooden giants is held by a very few individuals. The people on whom Preston reports range from Phd biologists to obsessives with no particular scientific background. He looks closely at tree-climbing methodologies (being a tree-climber himself) and at the extant technologies that support such endeavors. I learned things here, and got a far greater sense of what is lost when land is clear cut. Well worthwhile, educational and engaging.
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I first saw the article here, Lofty Aspirations, in Smithsonian Magazine back in 2002. But when I searched for it on that site, it was a nogo. Thankfully it still lives on the author's site.
March 17, 2018 – Smithsonian magazine for March 2018 – A fascinating article by Richard Grant, Do Trees Talk to Each Other?, about a German author and forester, Peter Wohlleben, who, in a new book, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, offers a novel understanding of our woodsy friends. The title of the story in the print magazine was The Whispering Trees. It was changed for the on-line version. Amazing stuff.
[image] Wohlleben compares beeches to an elephant herd—”They look after their own, help their sick and are even reluctant to abandon their dead.” (Diàna Markosian) - from above article
Maybe to start I can point you to the author. Yes, the book is written anonymously. The author had for four Hi, I'm Will. I'll be your reviewer today.
Maybe to start I can point you to the author. Yes, the book is written anonymously. The author had for four years written a blog about his experience as a waiter in a New York restaurant and needed to preserve his anonymity in order to prevent mayhem at his workplace. But you may notice that there is an actual name displayed up at the top of this menu page, so I guess he moved on in the years since his book came out.
[image] The author revealed
Steve Dublanica's is a tale of having wandered a bit, never really catching hold of a career, until at age 31, he found himself in a situation with which I am far too familiar, unemployment and desperation, and made some meringue out of the lemons life had served him. I found this to be (occasionally) a laugh-out-loud funny read, with much information to impart about what life is like in the restaurant business. We learn of the difference between the waiting and cooking staff. The latter work 13-14 hour days for less money than the waiters, for one. He tells of miserable customers, unpleasant restaurant owners who think nothing of regularly insulting their employees, stealing from them, and treating them terribly in a wide range of ways. How they are not shot dead more often is one of the mysteries of science. It was entertaining and informative, raising one’s appreciation for this work, and encouraging us all to leave better tips.
I'll get that check for you now. Thanks for reading, have a great day and come back soon.
August 7, 2017 - Washington Post food critic Tom Sietsema spends some time in the shoes of restaurant dishwashers - At the Heart of Every Restaurant - a wonderful article...more
**spoiler alert** The White City is the Chicago Columbia Exposition, a world fair in which all the buildings were painted white; the time the late 180**spoiler alert** The White City is the Chicago Columbia Exposition, a world fair in which all the buildings were painted white; the time the late 1800s during the fair; the Devil is a serial killer. Yet this is a non-fiction book. Larson has written a very informative as well as entertaining story. The Columbian Exposition was a very big deal. Chicago had vied for the honor of presenting a world’s fair, and when they were selected the energy of the famed slaughterhouse city was put to the wheel. There are many personalities involved, not least Daniel Burnham, one of the top architects of his day and the coordinator of the entire project design. He brought in Frederick Law Olmstead and many other top architects. Chicago was determined to outdo the French, whose world fair in Paris had been a triumph, introducing, among other things, the Eiffel Tower, and mass use of alternating current. Larson describes the conflicting and outlandish personalities of the time, and makes us marvel that the thing ever actually got done. The Chicago Exposition introduced some significant items of its own, not least of which was a very progressive notion of city planning, for the enterprise required attention to a multitude of facets simultaneously in order to come to fruition. One of the structures built was then the largest building in the world. The fair introduced Mister Ferris’ first working wheel. The Disney family attended and the fair may have inspired Walt to a development of his own. Buffalo Bill made millions with his entertainment just outside the fair gates (The fair had not allowed him to be a part of the show inside). Weather was a formidable opponent to the construction, as was the state of the economy, namely plummeting.
Counterbalancing the travails and triumphs of creating the fair, the Devil of the title was a young man named Holmes (no, not Sherlock). He had a very winning way with people, particularly creditors and attractive young women. He had some flaws however. Among them was a complete inability to empathize with anyone. He was an extreme example of what we refer to today as a psychopath. He set up shop in Chicago about that time, acquired some property and constructed on it a building of his own design. It was called The Castle, and one might be forgiven for imagining it with lightning bolts blasting stormy skies. For it was here that he murdered untold numbers of people, women, men, children. He designed the building to incorporate a space in which he could trap and gas people. He also allowed for his need to incinerate the bodies without releasing much aroma. His charm kept the suspicious at bay. Eventually, of course, he was found out and brought to justice, but not until he had slain somewhere between 50 and 200 people.
Larson peppers the book with dozens of satisfying factoids, about the people he is describing and about the times. It was, despite some of the darker subject matter, a very engaging, informative, and yes, fun read. ...more
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