The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, David Wallace-Wells, 2023 edition adapted for young adults, 157 pages, ISBN 9780593483572, Dewey 304.28 WThe Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, David Wallace-Wells, 2023 edition adapted for young adults, 157 pages, ISBN 9780593483572, Dewey 304.28 W155un new teen collection
mya = million years ago
Extinction events: 450 mya 86% of species dead 380 mya 75% of species dead 255 mya 96% of species dead 205 mya 80% of species dead 70 mya 75% of species dead
All but one of these involved greenhouse-gas-produced climate change. p. 3.
The worst, 255 mya, 96% of species dead, was caused by carbon dioxide raising global air temperature 5°C, leading to methane release. p. 3.
We are now adding carbon to the atmosphere at more than 10 times the rate of 255 mya. p. 4.
We're going to
bake, starve, drown, burn, parch, lose ocean life, choke, sicken, be impoverished, go to war, and worse.
Yet the author says he's optimistic because, "we remain in command."
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, David Wallace-Wells, 2023 edition adapted for young adults, 157 pages, ISBN 9780593483572, Dewey 304.28 WThe Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, David Wallace-Wells, 2023 edition adapted for young adults, 157 pages, ISBN 9780593483572, Dewey 304.28 W155un new teen collection
mya = million years ago
Extinction events: 450 mya 86% of species dead 380 mya 75% of species dead 255 mya 96% of species dead 205 mya 80% of species dead 70 mya 75% of species dead
All but one of these involved greenhouse-gas-produced climate change. p. 3.
The worst, 255 mya, 96% of species dead, was caused by carbon dioxide raising global air temperature 5°C, leading to methane release. p. 3.
We are now adding carbon to the atmosphere at more than 10 times the rate of 255 mya. p. 4.
We're going to
bake, starve, drown, burn, parch, lose ocean life, choke, sicken, be impoverished, go to war, and worse.
Yet the author says he's optimistic because, "we remain in command."
Chomsky's thoughts through Oct. 15, 2001 on the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist atta9-11, Noam Chomsky, 2001, 125 pages, ISBN 1583224890, Dewey 973.931 C454n
Chomsky's thoughts through Oct. 15, 2001 on the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Terrorism is a gift to repressive elements on all sides. p. 19. The U.S. Government is taking the opportunity to increase militarism, control, and wealth-transfer to the rich. There are bin Ladens on both sides. p. 34.
Bush upped the violence, provoking more attacks. p. 27.
Bush unleashed death and destruction on millions of innocent Afghans. pp. 94-101.
The media salute power in a time of crisis. p. 30
As for "Western civilization," perhaps we can heed the words attributed to Gandhi when asked what he thought about "Western civilization:" he said that it might be a good idea. p. 92.
/Unholy Wars/, John K. Cooley, 1999, on the CIA's recruiting, arming and training the most extreme Islamists it could find, to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. p. 18. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...
That Infernal Little Cuban Republic: The United States and the Cuban Revolution, Lars Schoultz (1942- ), 2009, 745 pages, ISBN 9780807832608, Dewey 32That Infernal Little Cuban Republic: The United States and the Cuban Revolution, Lars Schoultz (1942- ), 2009, 745 pages, ISBN 9780807832608, Dewey 327.73
A litany of U.S. neocolonialism and bullying. Very readable.
"The president … lacks a sense of conviction on what is right and wrong." --Chester Bowles. p. 199.
"The U.S. had dominated us too long. The Cuban Revolution was determined to end that domination." --Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
410 BCE: "Right is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." --Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, book 5, chapter 17. http://academics.wellesley.edu/Classi... p. 4.
Unless it would cost the strong too much. p. 6.
THOSE WHO OWN THE COUNTRY, GOVERN IT
1789-present: The secretary of state's job has always been to protect and promote U.S. interests abroad. No Cuban government could make any change without affecting U.S. interests. p. 98.
PIRACY
1822-1825: U.S. Navy and Marines invaded Cuba eight times to burn pirate stations and close a pirates' resale shop for plundered U.S.-shipping cargo. pp. 13, 572.
1868-1878: U.S. citizens aided an unsuccessful rebellion of Cubans against Spain. pp. 13-14.
RACISM
1869: "We have enough of inferior races in our midst without absorbing and not assimilating the Creoles and blacks of Cuba." --a U.S. congressman. p. 14.
BIG HELP
1895-1898: U.S. helped Cuba throw off Spanish control. U.S. would now control Cuba. pp. 14-33.
"Cuban heads of state are not representatives of a free Cuban people, but /administrators/ of American financial feudalism." --/The Nation/, 1933. p. 31.
1896: Cubans elected the wrong class of representatives to their U.S.-mandated constituent assembly. p. 24.
1897: U.S. investors were hungry for Cuban sugar and mining profits. p. 20.
RACISM
1897: "Cubans are no more capable of self government than the savages of Africa." --a U.S. Army general. p. 22.
1901: "No one wants more than I a good and stable government, of and by the people here [in Cuba], but we must see that the right class are in office." --Governor-General Leonard Wood. p. 8.
1903: U.S. investors in Cuban sugar were granted preferential access to the U.S. market. p. 28.
1947: Truman administration started a second Red Scare, screening federal employees for possible association with communist or other unfavored groups. By the time of Castro's 1959 ascension, the U.S. foreign policy bureaucracy had been cleansed of imagination and initiative. Elements of McCarthyism persist as of 2024. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCar... p. 90.
RACISM
1952: "Whether the new group under Batista will be any better is a question. Governments in Cuba are made up of Cubans." --a U.S. envoy. p. 49.
DICTATORS OK
[continuing through] 1952-present: Every U.S. administration supports right-wing dictators who support U.S. business interests. pp. 55-56, 58, 63, 247.
The U.S. arms, trains, and funds Latin American militaries so they can (1) keep a business-friendly tyrant in power, or, (2) overthrow their government if it becomes insufficiently friendly to U.S. business interests. pp. 60-61, 65, 67, 73.
Chile, 1973, Kissinger to Pinochet: "You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende. We want to help." p. 247.
SERFS
1953: More than half of rural dwellings had no toilet, inside or outside. Two percent of rural dwellings had running water. 80%-90% of rural children were infested with intestinal parasites. p. 53. More than half of Cuba's farmland was planted in sugar cane. More than 1/3 of Cuba's workforce was employed in sugar--most of them only for the 94-day harvest. p. 54.
CASTRO'S ACHIEVEMENTS
By 1975, Cubans were better fed, better housed, better clothed, better educated, and healthier than before the revolution and blockade. p. 268.
GUATEMALA
1954: The Eisenhower administration overthrew Guatemala's government[, beginning 40 years of terror. This taught Che Guevara that only armed force could bring justice]. p. 59.
CASTRO
1956-: Fidel Castro led a revolution against the Batista government. pp. 63-.
REWARDS
[continuing through] 1957-present: U.S. ambassadorships are rewards for financial contributions to the president's political party. p. 63.
CASTRO
1959: Fidel Castro's regime began. p. 83.
1959: Castro lowered rents and telephone rates. p. 94.
1959: Castro nationalized 3,750 square miles of cattle land, 3,000 square miles of sugarcane land, and 31 sugar mills. He offered investors tax value, which was 20% of market value, to be paid in 20-year bonds yielding 4.5% interest. He could not have paid cash, Batista having plundered Cuba's treasury. p. 95, 99. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=...
WHOSE CURTAIN?
1959: "We should not push Cuba behind an iron curtain raised by ourselves." --newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann. p. 100.
WITH US OR AGAINST US
1959: To Cold War Washington, a neutral Cuba would have the same effect on U.S. security as a communist Cuba. p. 106.
THREAT TO NEOCOLONIALISM
1959: "If Cuba gets by with actions against American property owners, our whole private enterprise approach abroad would be in serious danger." --Assistant Secretary of State R. Richard Rubottom Jr. p. 106.
CRIPPLE THEIR ECONOMY
1960: Cuba sold sugar to the USSR. The U.S. Government abandoned hope of friendly relations with Cuba. The CIA plotted overthrow. Cuba then appropriated U.S. investors' properties. The U.S. attacked Cuba's economy. The State Department told U.S. oil executives to refuse to refine Russian crude in their Cuban refineries. Cuba took over management of the refineries. The U.S. cut back sugar imports, Cuba's economic lifeblood. Cuba nationalized all U.S.-investor-owned commercial property. The U.S. closed Cuba's largest industrial plant, Nicaro nickel. Eisenhower curtailed exports to Cuba, canceled Cuba's sugar quota, and closed the U.S. embassy in Cuba. pp. 116-139.
Cuba's U.S. imports dropped 97%, 1953-1961. Cuban exports to the U.S. dropped from $490 million in 1958 to $35 million in 1961. p. 200. Eisenhower forbade U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba. p. 203. By 1963, Cuba's gross national product per capita had dropped 30%. p. 207. The Johnson administration pressured other countries not to trade with or recognize Cuba. 226-236 Nixon followed suit. (Many of Nixon's papers are still classified, as of 2009.) pp. 245-247, 254, 261.
TRADE
In the mid-1950s, the U.S. had sold Cubans 187,000 tons of rice per year. By 1975, U.S. producers wanted to sell again. p. 267-273.
HUBRIS
1961: The Bay of Pigs fiasco. No one warned President Kennedy before the invasion that denial of U.S. involvement would be impossible. Eisenhower and Kennedy both considered it politically impossible to do the 3 days of pre-invasion bombing of Castro's air force that would've been needed for the invasion to succeed. pp. 160-161. CIA Director Allen Dulles assumed that Kennedy would send U.S. combat forces rather than let the invasion fail. pp. 162-164. U.S. officials thought the Cuban people would welcome Castro's overthrow. That a small invasion force would be joined by spontaneous uprisings of Cubans against Castro. pp. 164-165. Castro's domestic popularity soared. p. 169. And he was enabled to suppress all internal opposition. p. 172.
/I/ KNOW WHAT LET'S DO!
1961: Having failed to overthrow the government of Cuba, Kennedy's team suggested he overthrow communism in Vietnam. p. 170.
THE DANGER OF A GOOD EXAMPLE
Still, Castro couldn't be tolerated: his was a positive example of a working communist revolution. p. 172. "If Cuba succeeds, we can expect most of Latin America to fall." p. 182.
WE CAN'T STAND IT
By 1962, the world's largest CIA station was in Miami: its only job was to overthrow the Cuban government. p. 186-189, 221, 239. The Pentagon proposed the chemical and bacterial contamination of Cuba's food supply. p. 189. [The CIA under Jimmy Carter would mass-murder Jamaicans by poisoning flour and rice, after their government taxed bauxite extraction. --Killing Hope, William Blum, 2014, pp. 263-267.]
USSR
1962: Cuban Missile Crisis. pp. 183-187.
SABOTAGE
/Un/authorized (but CIA-funded) sabotage by freelance Cuban exiles was stopped if possible, but not prosecuted. The unauthorized saboteurs were caught and released. pp. 190, 214-216, 220. Every president tolerated freelance attacks on Cuba until 1977. p. 221. From 1977 to 1980, Carter grew ever closer to the hard-line Cold War views of his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. p. 294.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
LBJ sent 20,000 marines to put down a rebellion against the Dominican government. p. 237.
HIJACKING
1961-1973: 159 U.S. aircraft were hijacked, 85 of them to Cuba. Some hijackers were Batistianos fleeing Cuba, beginning 1959. The U.S. and Cuba reached an agreement in 1973 to punish or return hijackers, after which hijacking mostly stopped. The "downside" of the agreement was increased calls from Americans for closer relations with Cuba. pp. 256-259.
Recommends:
/Race over Empire: Racism and U.S. Imperialism, 1865-1900/, Eric T.L. Love, 2004. p. 572.
/Cuba y los Estados Unidos, 1805-1898/, Emilio Roig de Leuchsenting, 1949. p. 572.
Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992, William M. Leogrande, 1998, 773 pages, Dewey 327.73072809048, ISBN 0807823953
This iOur Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992, William M. Leogrande, 1998, 773 pages, Dewey 327.73072809048, ISBN 0807823953
This is a very detailed account of U.S. actions in Nicaragua and El Salvador, 1977-1992. And of the U.S. internal politics leading to the decisions.
We went to war in Central America to exorcize the ghosts of Vietnam and to renew the national will to use force abroad. p. 590.
Congresspeople were terrified of being tarred as "soft on Communism" by a popular president. p. 525, 588. "We need a bill that's 60% acceptable to 52% of the members of Congress. We have a 75% chance of doing that." p. 533.
The American public opposed Reagan's Central America policy--but so long as no U.S. combat troops were sent, the American public didn't care much. p. 589.
After the USSR folded its tents, the U.S. declared victory and forgot about Central America. p. 579.
NICARAGUA
Some 30,000 Nicaraguans died in the contra war--proportionate to population, more than the U.S. lost in the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam /combined/. Over 100,000 Nicaraguans became refugees. Millions were pauperized as real wages fell 90%, inflation spun out of control, and a third of the labor force was unemployed. p. 582.
President Taft sent marines to Nicaragua in 1912 to prop up the unpopular pro-U.S.-business government. Marines left in 1933, leaving Somoza in charge. Somoza murdered Liberal Party leader Sandino. Somoza and his progeny ruled as a kleptocracy until 1979.
The Somoza regime was so universally hated that the business elite joined with Marxist guerrillas to kick them out.
The new governing party called themselves, "Sandinistas."
Presidents Carter, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush did not want a Communist government "in our own backyard." Reagan especially considered it unacceptable, and felt that no price was too high to destroy the Nicaraguan government.
Remnants of the Somoza national guard roved the Nicaraguan countryside, plundering farms and villages.
Reagan sent the CIA to support these thugs. The CIA illegally organized, funded, and armed them, creating a "contra-revolucionario" army with help from Argentina's and Honduras's militaries.
Reagan sent hundreds of millions of dollars to these "contras" throughout his presidency, and gave them training and CIA support, including information on Nicaraguan armed-forces movements.
When the U.S. Congress refused to fund Reagan's war against Nicaragua, he told his national security team to keep the contras in the field however they could. They used illegal arms sales to Iran to fund the contra war. (And gave money to other countries, who would give part of it to the contras. pp. 389, 502.) Team Reagan acted with secrecy, deception, and disdain for the rule of law. pp. 499, 586. Reagan administration hard-liners were building a permanent secret U.S. government. p. 503. Revealing the scandal did not end aid to the contras. pp. 503, 517, 529, 549, 555. Reagan's hard-liners were willing to fight to the last Nicaraguan. p. 539.
In the 1980s, the CIA involved the Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran militaries in drug trafficking, to fund the Nicaraguan Contras: up to $2 million per week, sold in Los Angeles. Government complacency attracted Colombian trafficking families to Guatemala in the 1990s. --A History of Violence, Óscar Martínez, 2016, pp. 47-48. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The CIA also mined Nicaragua's harbors, sinking other countries' trading ships.
The U.S. government embargoed trade from Nicaragua, and made sure that no international financial institution would loan Nicaragua money. This devastated the Nicaraguan economy. p. 538, 548.
Nevertheless, the contras were unable to overthrow the Sandinista government.
Reagan tried unsuccessfully for eight years to defeat the Nicaraguan government militarily, using the contras.
George H.W. Bush was willing to remove the Sandinistas by having destroyed the economy, and, in addition to /overt/ funding amounting to $7 per Nicaraguan voter, sending the CIA to interfere in elections, to make sure the U.S.-approved candidate won. p. 561, 579.
With the Sandinistas out, Nicaragua's importance to the U.S. plummeted. p. 564, 579. After the war, the U.S.-approved president of Nicaragua spoke to a joint session of Congress, begging for economic aid. Few Congressional representatives or senators bothered to attend.
The USSR sent Nicaragua significant military aid only /after/ Reagan started the contra war. p. 585.
EL SALVADOR
Despite over a billion dollars in U.S. military aid, the Salvadoran armed forces could not defeat the guerrillas. Some 80,000 Salvadorans died, mostly innocent civilians killed by the military and the government's security forces, armed and bankrolled by Washington. Three billion dollars in U.S. economic aid prevented the Salvadoran economy from collapsing like Nicaragua's, but by 1991, a third of the population was unemployed and 90% lived in poverty, not earning enough to adequately feed a family of four. The eventual peace agreement could have happened in 1981, but Reagan didn't want it. p. 583. See /A History of Violence/, Óscar Martínez, 2016, for some of the aftermath of Reagan's war: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
0.1% of El Salvadorans were the ruling elite, who owned 60% of the farmland, all the banks, and most of the industry. 87% of rural families owned too little land to subsist on. All of El Salvador's small land area is in use. El Salvador hasn't fully recovered from a 1969 recession. The oligarchy has ruled from behind the skirts of a military dictatorship since the 1932 slaughter of a peasant uprising. The elite fear any threat to their position, and look to maintain it with all the savagery required. The army counted the ballots: elections were a charade. It was illegal for peasants to organize politically. Export agriculture expanded: peasants were forced off the land. pp. 34-35. The army was the state, 1931-1992. p. 578.
Unlike Nicaragua, the U.S.-approved right-wing government stayed in office. But Marxist guerrillas waged a war that neither side could win. The U.S. supplied funding, weapons, and advisers. Eventually, the war ended in a negotiated settlement. p. 579.
The author received fellowships from the Council on Foreign Relations and the Open Society Foundation, that enabled him to work as a congressional staff member. p. xiv. Meaning that congressional staff are so low-paid that only the financially-independent can accept the positions. Usually family members of the rich. One small part of the reason we have the best government money can buy.
Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, Vijay Prashad, Frank Barat, ed., 2022, 162 pages, Dewey 335, ISBN 9781642596908
Lots abStruggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, Vijay Prashad, Frank Barat, ed., 2022, 162 pages, Dewey 335, ISBN 9781642596908
Lots about how the wealthy powerful few have plundered the rest of us. With attempts at optimism.
Victories:
Hugo Chávez won the presidency of Venezuela in 1998, established a new constitution, and fended off a coup in 2002. Lula won in Brazil in 2003. Bolivians voted Socialists in, in 2019. Hondurans voted out the U.S.-sponsored coup regime in 2021. pp. 2-3. Indian farmers won repeal of anti-farmer laws in 2021. p. 4. The USSR pioneered public medical care, guaranteed housing and education. Producer cooperatives in Kerala have millions of members. Brazil's Landless Workers' Movements are building socialism through education and cooperative farming. The future is here. pp. 116, 153. Cuba's literacy rate is 99%; the U.S. adult literacy rate is 79%. p. 154.
I thank the trade union movement for the weekend. p. 47.
A better future is possible. p. 71.
If the iPhone were made entirely in the U.S., it would sell for $30,000. Who pays for the discount to $699? The people of the copperbelt, in very low wages and barely any social wages for schools and hospitals. p. 104.
Debt cancellation is the #1 issue. Cancel the $11 trillion debt of the global victims of imperialism to the northern banks. p. 117.
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, David Graeber (1961-2020) and David Wengrow (1972- ), 2021, 692 pages, Dewey 901, ISBN 978037415735The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, David Graeber (1961-2020) and David Wengrow (1972- ), 2021, 692 pages, Dewey 901, ISBN 9780374157357
The authors set out to write a history of inequality. They learned that there was never an original natural state of human society. People have been organizing themselves in a variety of political ways for 200,000 years. The current organization into states can't be thought of as inevitable.
Homo sapiens 200,000 BCE- p. 1.
No better way to get anthropologists denouncing each other than to mention Napoleon Chagnon. p. 16. (Chagnon said the Yanomami of Amazonia are violent, and that their case may indicate that so are we all. According to Steven Pinker, if not for Voltaire and police, academics would be actually stabbing each other in this debate.)
European missionaries to Native Americans in the 1600s struggled to translate concepts like "lord," "commandment," or "obedience" into indegenous languages. p. 44.
Native Americans said, Europeans wouldn't need to coerce each other to behave well, if not for their system of money and property rights, that encourages them to behave badly. p. 54.
The political "right" and "left" originally referred to seating positions of aristocratic and popular factions in the French National Assembly of 1789. p. 69. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natio...
A few powerful people are wrecking the world. How'd that happen? p. 76.
Egalitarianism can exist only if there's no possibility of accumulating any sort of surplus.--anthropologist James Woodburn p. 128. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Americans are free from having to obey the arbitrary orders of superiors--unless, of course, they have to get a job. p. 131.
When someone else's purpose in life is to interfere with you, he must be stopped, lest you become his slave, his pet. --an indigenous Californian, 1800s. p. 203.
We make our own history, but not under conditions of our own choosing. --Karl Marx. p. 206.
Çatalhöyük, Turkey, was first settled c. 7400 BCE. 13 hectares (32 acres, .05 sq mi, .13 sq km), 5,000 population. (100,000/sq mi, 156/acre). p. 212. https://www.google.com/maps/place/K%C... Practised flood-retreat farming. p. 235.
Harvesting wild plants and turning them into food, medicine and complex structures like baskets or clothing is almost everywhere a female activity. p. 237.
Settlements inhabited by tens of thousands of people make their first appearance in human history around 6000 years ago, on almost every continent, at first in isolation. p. 283. The largest early cities were in Mesoamerica. p. 285. Teotihuacan reached 100,000 largely of refugees of volcanic and seismic disasters, 100 BCE to 600 CE. pp. 286, 329, 336, 341-344. River floodplains settled in their courses, and sea level stabilized, around 7,000 years ago.
Ukrainian and Moldovan cities of over 1,000 500-square-foot houses, in a 750-acre built area, were inhabited 4100 - 3300 BCE. pp. 290-291. No evidence of social stratification.
From around 2800 BCE onward, monarchy starts popping up everywhere. p. 298.
Uruk is the first city for which we have extensive written records. p. 306.
Aristocracies, and maybe monarchy, first arose in opposition to the egalitarian cities of the Mesopotamian plains. Compare Alaric vs. Rome, Genghis Khan vs. Samarkand, Timur vs. Delhi. p. 313. Argives vs. Troy, Attila vs. Europe p. 445, Vikings vs. Europe, whoever brought the war chariot there vs. India. p. 311. [Let's continue the list: British East India Company vs. India. British Petroleum vs. Mosaddegh. Chiquita vs. Árbenz. Michelin vs. Vietnam. Allen Dulles vs. JFK. Kennecott Copper vs. Allende. Al-Qaeda vs. US. Putin vs. Ukraine.]
At Taosi, China, 2000 BCE, aristocracy was apparently overthrown; the city then increased in size over the next 200-300 years. pp. 325-326.
At least 100,000 people lived in Teotihuacan, which covered 8 square miles, 100 BCE to 600 CE. pp. 286, 329, 336, 341-344. No overlords nor kings.
Cortés in 1519 found no kings in Tlaxcala, a city of 150,000. p. 348. Governed by consensus of a city council. p. 353.
Elections often choose charismatic leaders with tyrannical pretensions. p. 356.
Control of violence, control of information, and individual charisma are the three possible bases of social power. p. 365.
As late as the 1780s, as Max Weber liked to point out, Frederick the Great of Prussia found that his repeated efforts to free the country's serfs came to nothing because bureaucrats would simply ignore the decrees or, if challenged by his legates, insisted the words of the decree should be interpreted as saying the exact opposite of what was obviously intended. p. 394.
People have an unfortunate tendency to see the successful prosecution of arbitrary violence as in some sense divine. p. 395.
Three freedoms: to relocate, to disobey, to make and break social alliances. p. 426, 503.
Minoan Crete, 1700-1450 BCE. No evidence of monarchy. Female political rule. Palaces unfortified. [The eruption of Thera (Santorini) has been estimated at around 1642 BCE, from Greenland ice cores.] Linear A writing hasn't been deciphered. p. 434-438. Greek mainland: walled citadels 1400 BCE, soon overtook Crete. p. 436. Linear B is Greek. p. 437.
3000 BCE - 1600 CE: miserable for farmers, great for barbarians. --James C. Scott. p. 445.
Karl Jaspers' "Axial Age," 800-201 BCE, Greek/Indian/Chinese philosophy appears in the wake of coinage. p. 450. Also the spread of chattel slavery. Which then declined as axial empires dissolved.
Cahokia, Illinois, 1050-1350 CE. City of 15,000, 6 square miles. Ritual mass killings and burials. Entire area abandoned. pp. 452, 465, 481-482.
Hopewell Interaction Sphere, 100 BCE to 500 CE, network tying nearly all parts of North America together, centered near Chillicothe, Ohio. p. 457.
Osage Missouri River trading empire, 1678-1803. p.476.
To get a sense of a society's values, see what they consider the worst behavior. For the Haudenosaunee (League Iroquois: Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Mohawk), giving orders is almost as bad as cannibalism. pp. 483, 485.
1230 - 1375, Iroquois began to give up seasonal mobility, settle in palisaded towns of up to 2,000. p. 487.
Patriarchic rule may have originated as orphans, widows, and others in need relied on the hospitality of the chief. pp. 520-521.
Societies lacking both slavery and war were common outside the Eurasian Iron Age. p. 523. [1300 BCE, Caucasus foothills, Hittites first used iron weapons, so says Isaac Asimov, Asimov's Chronology of the World, p. 43. "Iron has been discovered for the evil of mankind." --Lichas the Lacedemonian, quoted in Herodotus' History, Volume 1.]
New truths replace old when old theorists die. --Max Planck. p. 525.
Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015), 1973 (written 1970, published 1971 in [image]
Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015), 1973 (written 1970, published 1971 in Spanish as Las venas abiertas de América Latina; epilog 1978, new foreword by Isabel Allende, 1997), ISBN 0853459916, Dewey 330.98
For high-school age and up. Facts that history as told by conquerors hides or lies about. p. 265. The most favorable reviews came from the military dictatorships who praised the book by banning it.
New foreword by Isabel Allende, 1997: The U.S. would not allow a leftist experiment to succeed in "its backyard." After coups in many countries, half the continent's population was living in terror. (Salvador Allende was president of Chile when Galeano wrote this book. p. 130. Dec. 20, 1970 he announced plans to nationalize Chile's copper mines--from which Anaconda Copper and Kennecott Copper, U.S. firms, had extracted $4 billion. p. 144. Allende would die during a CIA-sponsored coup in 1973.)
Introduction: The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing.
Part I: Mankind's Poverty as a consequence of the wealth of the land
1: Lust for Gold, Lust for Silver
1513 Balboa sees the Pacific 1522 Magellan's 18 surviving circumnavigators return to Spain. 1533 Pizarro seizes the heart of the Inca empire. p. 16. 1800 at least half of Mexican land & capital belonged to the Church. p. 31.
A staggering fraction of the population was worked to death in the mines. Mercury poisoning killed miners within 4 years, if nothing else yet had. Today's (1971) Bolivian miners die of lung diseases at age 35. pp. 46-47. The gold mines of Ouro Preto in Brazil had an insatiable appetite for slaves: they died in short order, only in rare cases enduring the seven years of continuous labor. p. 54. Even now (1971) Bolivians die with rotted lungs so the world may consume cheap tin. p. 149.
Wealth extracted from land and labor was squandered in opulence.
The exploited workers under colonial rule remained exploited workers after independence: the landed aristocrats under colonial rule were still landed aristocrats after independence. pp. 46, 116.
2. King Sugar and Other Agricultural Monarchs
Where opulence is most opulent, misery is most miserable. p. 64. Allen Dulles was a director of the Francisco Sugar Company in Cuba. p. 74. Police in Brazil arrested peasants and sold them as slaves, to wealthy landowners, in 1970. p. 87. Countries dependent on banana, coffee, cacao exports, subject to competition & price reductions, leave people poor and underfed. p. 94.
"Dumping" of U.S.-Government-subsidized cotton, rice, wheat, corn, and other agricultural commodities destroys farmers' livelihoods worldwide. p. 95. Latin American agricultural workers receive hunger wages or are serfs. Salvadorans, who supply cotton to Japanese textile industries, consume fewer calories and proteins than the hungry peasants of India. 25% of Salvadorans die of vitamin deficiency. p. 98.
U.S. companies take the profit from Latin American bananas, coffee, and cotton. Latin Americans are the victims. p. 100.
Colombia erupted in peasant revolt, savagely crushed by the forces of wealth, 1948-1957. 80 percent were undernourished. p. 104.
Early 1800s, the red cochineal bug and blue indigo plant were Central American exports to the British textile industry. 1850, German chemists supplanted them with synthetics. p. 105.
1880: coffee. Local elite grabbed the land and labor, with government help. p. 106. U.S. Marine Corps General Smedley Butler was "a high-class muscle man for Big Business" for 33 years. p. 108.
United Fruit (now Chiquita) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite... essentially owned Guatemala. It used only 8% of the land it held. The Arbenz government bought some of the unused land and began distributing it to peasants. The Eisenhower administration trained and equipped Colonel Armas' thugs to overthrow Guatemala's government in 1954 and install Armas as military dictator. "We had to get rid of a Communist government," said Eisenhower. p. 113. CIA director Allen Dulles had been on United Fruit's board of directors. His brother John Foster Dulles was a lawyer who had worked for United Fruit. This began a [40]-year reign of terror. The slaughter that is greater but more hidden--the daily genocide of poverty--also continues.
In Mexico, Emiliano Zapata and his followers fought the landowners and their governments, 1910 to 1919, when they killed him. pp. 120-126.
1.5% of agricultural landlords own half of all cultivable land.
Latin America from the start was used for plunder of its land and labor, which continues. The New England colonies by contrast yielded no mineral or tropical-crop plunder: England permitted them to develop factories, and use the land for homesteading pioneers. pp. 130-133.
3. The Invisible Sources of Power
The U.S. depends on foreign sources for most of the minerals it needs to maintain its ability to wage war. p. 137.
Part II: Development Is a Voyage with More Shipwrecks than Navigators
4. Tales of Premature Death
After World War II, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank denied underdeveloped countries the right to protect their industries. p. 204.
5. The Contemporary Structure of Plunder
Imperialism spreads poverty widely and concentrates wealth narrowly. p. 207.
Latin-American dictatorships hawk their countries to foreign capitalists as a pimp offers a woman. p. 217.
IMF requirements further opened the gates to foreign conquerors. p. 220.
"Aid" works like the philanthropist who put a wooden leg on his piglet because he was eating it bit by bit. p. 227.
The World Bank responds to the United States like thunder to lightning. p. 234.
Part III: Seven Years After
Chilean dictator Pinochet gave foreign monopolists the businesses Allende had nationalized. Business free as never before; people in jail as never before. Free market? The price of milk has not been controlled in Chile since 1975. Two firms dominate the market. The price of milk for consumers went up 40%, while for the producers it went down by 22%. p. 271.
The abyss in Latin America between the well-being of the few and the misery of the many is infinitely greater than in Europe or the United States. p. 271. Hence more ruthlessness in maintaining it. In Uruguay, the function of one fifth of the active population is to watch, trail, and punish the others.
Dictators keep their boots on the necks of their people to supply cheap labor to an international market that demands cheap products. p. 275.
Thomas Ray
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