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."
Rethinking Diabetes, Gary Taubes, 2024, 495 pages, Dewey 616.462, ISBN 9780525520085
Only low-carbohydrate, high-fat diets show consistent benefits. ppRethinking Diabetes, Gary Taubes, 2024, 495 pages, Dewey 616.462, ISBN 9780525520085
Only low-carbohydrate, high-fat diets show consistent benefits. pp. 16, 265. The introduction of fat is the most important art in diabetic cookery. p. 39. Our brains are 60% fat. p. 57. If you're going to eat a vegetable, put cheese sauce or oil or butter or cream on it.
The diet that best prevents heart disease in /anyone/ is that which lowers blood sugar and minimizes insulin in the blood p. 250, 255.
Carbohydrates raise the blood concentration of triglycerides and very-low-density lipoproteins (VLDL); saturated fats raise the concentration of low-density lipoproteins (LDL). pp. 257, 259-260. High triglycerides predict heart disease. pp. 261-262.
Overindulgence in rice, flour, and sugar causes diabetes. --Indian physicians, 500s BCE. p. 211. Obesity is caused by starches, grains, and sugars in the diet. More or less rigid abstinence from these foods is the only viable solution. p. 358. --Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, /The Physiology of Taste/, 1825. "When I was growing up, everybody knew that eating too much sugar was what caused diabetes." p. 352. --Jesse Roth (1934- ), 2004. Diabetes becomes epidemic in populations eating more than 70 pounds of sugar per person per year (3 oz./day or 90 g/day). --George Campbell, 1966, p. 218. Weight loss, fat loss, and percent weight loss as fat, are inversely related to the level of carbohydrate in the diet. Carbohydrate restriction enables long-term weight loss and weight control, without hunger or fatigue. --Charlotte Young, 1973.
If a healthy person lives for 3 days on a carbohydrate-free diet, the liver changes fat into ketone bodies such as acetone and diacetic acid, which then appear in the urine. This is benign. The body and brain metabolize these ketone bodies instead of glucose. pp. 76-77, 159, 337.
Dogs with mild diabetes thrive on all-meat diets. Dogs with severe diabetes need to be calorie-restricted to keep them from ketoacidosis, coma, and death. pp. 72, 158.
The liver can synthesize glucose, even on a carbohydrate-free diet. pp. 45, 319-322. It breaks glycogen apart to do so. p. 327. If blood sugar drops too low, the pancreas secretes the hormone glucagon, signaling the liver to synthesize glucose. p. 326. The liver turns excess protein to glucose. p. 70. Glucagon signals the liver to turn amino acids to glucose, if blood glucose is low. p. 327. Only fat, fructose, and alcohol can be metabolized without a functional pancreas (and insulin-sensitive cells) to control blood glucose. pp. 62, 141. The easiest way to make a rat or mouse diabetic is, feed it lots of fructose. (Gary Taubes, The Case against Sugar, p. 351.) The brain uses 6 grams of glucose an hour, p. 327, 100 to 150 grams per day, p. 338. Or, the brain can use ketone bodies instead. p. 338.
Insulin is released by the pancreas in response to glucose in the blood. p. 153.
Effects of high blood sugar:
* damages hemoglobin, to abnormal form A1C. p. 270. High levels of hemoglobin A1C (above 6% of hemoglobin pp. 301, 308) predict severity of diabetes, and risk of heart disease, stroke, and premature death. p. 271. (p. 370 defines 5.7% as prediabetic, 6.5% as diabetic.) * Damaged proteins such as hemoglobin A1C are "advanced glycation end products (AGEs)," so acronymed as they are effects of age, accelerated by high blood sugar. These damaged proteins can knit together with other proteins, "cross-linking" to cause, for example, loss of elasticity in the skin, and stiffening joints, heart, lungs, and arteries, retinas, nerves, and kidneys. pp. 272-273. * High blood sugar inside cells that can't regulate penetration of glucose into their interiors, can damage the cell's DNA, which can lead to cancer. p. 273. * High blood sugar oxidizes the protein and fats of LDL in the blood, leading to plaque deposits in blood-vessel walls. p. 274. Saturated fat becomes LDL, so if you eat saturated fat AND carbohydrate, plaques form in your blood vessels. p. 274. * damages the pancreas, reducing its ability to make insulin. p. 335.
Effects of insulin: pp. 58-59
* signals cells to take in glucose as fuel--which they then do unless they've become insulin resistant. p. 167. Insulin resistance leaves blood glucose high despite high levels of blood insulin. p. 263. Insulin injected to lower blood sugar /all/ goes into the blood circulation, so it all signals cells to take in glucose. Insulin from the pancreas first shuts off glucagon production p. 328, then goes to the liver, which releases only half of it into the bloodstream. p. 326. * signals muscle and liver to store glucose in glycogen form (includes 3 water molecules per glucose molecule). * signals the liver and fat cells to turn carbohydrates into fat, in the form of triglycerides. pp. 153, 159, 264. * signals fat cells to sequester fatty acids. They do this at insulin concentrations so tiny other cells can't detect it. pp. 150, 154, 159-160. * inhibits excretion of salt in the urine, which also retains water and raises blood pressure. p. 266 * enables fatty plaques to form in the walls of blood vessels, damaging them, harming the heart, kidneys, retinas, lower limbs. p. 183. * causes weight gain, in part by sequestering fats in the fat cells and inhibiting the body's cells from metabolizing fat. Diabetics on sufficient insulin to control blood sugar to 150 to 200 mg/dl (normal range is 70 to 140 mg/dl p. 319), on the American Diabetes Association recommended diet of 50% carbohydrates, 15% protein, 35% fat, gain, on average, 10 pounds in a year, and keep it on, gaining weight even while eating less. pp. 308-309. * Insulin injected to lower a diabetic's blood sugar, risks lowering it too much, sometimes to coma and death. p. 309. In health, the pancreas releases the counteracting hormone glucagon to keep blood sugar from going too low. Hypoglycemic coma occurs only by insulin injection. p. 326. Insulin inhibits the pancreas from releasing glucagon, which would have signaled the liver to convert glycogen and amino acids to glucose. p. 328. Coma commonly occurs at blood glucose levels around 45 mg/dl. p. 342. However, people adapted to using ketones instead of glucose as fuel have suffered no ill effects of blood glucose as low as 10 mg/dl. pp. 341, 445. [E.J. Drenick et al., 1972, "Resistance to Symptomatic Insulin Reactions after Fasting," The Journal of Clinical Investigation 51, no. 10 (Oct.): 2757-62.] Blood glucose levels above 180 mg/dl prompt the kidneys to excrete glucose in the urine. p. 342.
Effects of glucagon:
* raises blood sugar. If you have high blood sugar, you have high glucagon. Even if insulin is zero, we don't become diabetic unless the pancreas is oversecreting glucagon. p. 328. Injecting the hormone somatostatin reduces glucagon secretion, so lowers blood sugar. p. 328.
The effect of any diet is to be judged by those who follow it, not by those who break it. p. 3.
Many diabetics on insulin get fat, with ordinary amounts of food. pp. 132-133, 141-143, 161-162.
Successful treatment of obesity is rarely achieved in clinical practice. p. 163.
A new class of drugs has recently been shown to induce weight loss. Based on a hormone secreted from the gut, glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP1). Those who go off the drugs gain back the weight. pp. 23, 403. Long-term side effects are unknown.
Clinical trials necessary to rigorously assess the risks and benefits of diets of significantly different proportions of protein, fats, and carbohydrates have never been conducted. p. 14.
About 25% of medical spending in the U.S. is for diabetes care. p. 11.
Real-time, continuous, accurate glucose monitoring has been available since 2011. p. 395.
The greatest cause of tooth decay is acid from bacterial fermentation of starch and sugar. p. 229.
Insulin from 1922 to 1982 was taken from slaughtered pigs and cattle: 8,000 pounds of pancreases from 23,000 animals produced a pound of insulin. Since 1982, it's synthetic human insulin, produced by bacteria modified with the insulin-producing gene. p. 305.
Scientific knowledge advances as authorities who trumpeted false theories die. p. 249.
The Case for Keto, Gary Taubes, 2020, 289 pages, ISBN 9780525520061, Dewey 641.56383 T191c.
Low-carbohydrate, high-fat, ketogenic eating is no longer fThe Case for Keto, Gary Taubes, 2020, 289 pages, ISBN 9780525520061, Dewey 641.56383 T191c.
Low-carbohydrate, high-fat, ketogenic eating is no longer fringe. It's catching on because it works. p. 216.
Insulin prompts cells to burn glucose instead of fat, causes the liver to turn glucose into fat, causes fat cells to store fat. Insulin must be low for fat cells to release fat. We can't get fat without eating carbohydrates. pp. 87-102. Fat cells store fat at insulin levels low enough that other cells can't detect it. Fat cells respond to insulin after other cells have become resistant. pp. 110-131, 171.
High blood glucose damages blood vessels, nerves, and kidneys. p. 89.
You don't cure an addiction with moderation, but with abstinence. p. 180. "My last bowl of cereal and my last piece of bread were over six years ago. I do not miss them." p. 182.
Some blood-pressure medications, such as beta blockers, can cause weight gain, as can antihistamines. p. 247.
Good Calories, Bad Calories, Gary Taubes, 2007, 601 pages, Dewey 613.283 T191g, ISBN 9781400040780
PHYSIOLOGY (p. 454 sums up)
When we eat fats, they brGood Calories, Bad Calories, Gary Taubes, 2007, 601 pages, Dewey 613.283 T191g, ISBN 9781400040780
PHYSIOLOGY (p. 454 sums up)
When we eat fats, they break down into fatty acids that circulate in the blood; the body's cells burn them for fuel.
When we eat carbohydrates, they break down to glucose, triggering the release of insulin into our blood. The fatty acids are whisked into fat cells, sequestered as triglycerides (three fatty acids on a backbone of glycerol phosphate, provided by the carbohydrates). Insulin prompts muscle cells to use the glucose as fuel.
If too much insulin stays in our blood too long, our cells become desensitized to it.
If muscle cells are desensitized to insulin, they don't burn the glucose.
If fat cells are still sensitized to insulin, they still sequester fatty acids.
In this condition, the cells aren't getting fuel they can use, to maintain their functions. Cell activity slows. The person is lethargic. And hungry. p. 445.
Eating more carbohydrates increases blood sugar the cells aren't using. Eating more fats sequesters them in fat cells.
Limiting our food makes us lethargic. Working more makes us hungry. Neither diet nor exercise loses weight long term. pp. 299, 304.
Constant-weight people burn more calories when they eat more. Fatten-easily people instead store the excess as fat. p. 301. Excess protein partly burns off. p. 302.
High blood sugar damages blood vessels.
Avoiding carbohydrates will lower insulin levels, enabling release of fatty acids from fat cells.
Rats rendered diabetic voluntarily choose diets devoid of carbohydrates, consuming only protein and fat. Their blood sugar fell to normal, they ate less food and drank only normal amounts of water. p. 430.
FRUCTOSE
Fructose all goes to the liver, which transforms it into triglycerides. This promotes insulin resistance. p. 200. It is also particularly prone to forming clumps with proteins, promoting vascular diseases. p. 201.
Eating fatty steak, lard, and bacon, instead of bread, potatoes, and noodles, would reduce heart-disease risk, though virtually no nutritional authority will say so publicly. p. 169.
Without carbohydrates you cannot gain weight. p. 410. Kuo put his patients on a sugar-free diet, with only 500-600 starch calories a day. 1967. p. 159. U.S. Navy physicians prescribed an 800- to 1000-calorie "ketogenic" diet of 70% fat, 20% protein, 10% carbohydrate to fat seamen. All lost weight without hunger, while higher-carb diets had left them hungry. p. 407.
A young rat, restricted for the rest of its life to two-thirds its preferred diet, will likely live 30% to 50% longer than had we let it eat to satiation, and age-related diseases will be delayed in their onset and slowed in their progression. p. 218.
By the year 2000, Americans were eating 150 pounds of sugar and high-fructose corn syrup a year. pp. 116, 199, 456. And 200 lb. of flour and grain, 130 lb. of potatoes, 27 lb. of corn. p. 458.
Sugar is addictive. p. 446.
By the mid-1960s, four facts had been established beyond reasonable doubt: (1) carbohydrates are singularly responsible for prompting insulin secretion; (2) insulin is singularly responsible for inducing fat accumulation; (3) dietary carbohydrates are required for excess fat accumulation; (4) both Type 2 diabetics and fat people have high levels of circulating insulin and an exaggerated insulin response to carbohydrates in the diet. p. 394.
Insulin inhibits the release of fat from fat cells. p. 426.
Missing is any mention of the positive effects of physical activity on metabolism. Frequent intense prolonged exercise may enable a type-2 diabetic to control his blood sugar. Taubes doesn't say so. After a long day of hard work, you may need to eat carbs right away, to restore your glycogen reserves. Taubes doesn't say it.
Taubes' advice is for the many of us who are largely-to-completely sedentary, and have been eating more carbs than are good for us.
THE FOCUS
The focus of the book is on calling out the junk science and dogmatism behind authorities' advocacy of high-carb diets--often even for diabetics.
Those who /know/ what the answer is lack the motivation to continue looking for it. p. 377.
REFERENCES
/Not by Bread Alone/, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 1946. Fat-and-protein diets, such as the traditional Inuit diet. The Inuit, and the European explorers and traders who shared their plant-free diet, were perfectly healthy, as were the author and an associate who replicated the diet for over a year on return to Europe. They didn't even get scurvy. The all-meat diet provides enough of all the vitamins, /if/ the person doesn't eat carbohydrates. Insulin competes with the vitamins for receptors on cells. In the presence of insulin, a person's need for vitamins is much higher. pp. 320, 324, 328.
Ketone bodies, glycerol, and protein-derived glucose suffice to fuel the brain. p. 456.
/Obesity and Leanness/, Hugo Romy, 1940, is easily the most thoughtful analysis ever written in English on weight regulation in humans. p. 294. "Children do not grow because they eat voraciously. They eat voraciously because they are growing. For every calorie stored as fat or lean tissue, the body will require that an extra calorie be consumed or conserved." pp. 294-295.
/Handbook of Physiology/, American Physiological Society, 1965: 800 page volume dedicated to the latest research on fat metabolism. Albert Renold, coeditor. p. 386.
Edgar S. Gordon, 1969, The Metabolic Importance of Obesity, in Symposium on Foods: Carbohydrates and their roles, ed. H.W. Schultz (pp 322-346). pp. 388, 529.
Edgar S. Gordon, "A New Concept in the Treatment of Obesity," JAMA, Oct. 5, 1963, 186:50-60. Low-carb. p. 412.
Best American Magazine Writing 2018, Sid Holt, ed., 2019, ISBN 9780231189996, Dewey 814.608
A celebrated sexual-harassment case. ["Sexual harassment" cBest American Magazine Writing 2018, Sid Holt, ed., 2019, ISBN 9780231189996, Dewey 814.608
A celebrated sexual-harassment case. ["Sexual harassment" could mean anything from a comment about her appearance, to rape. The authors do the reader the disservice of flogging this coy, meaningless phrase, refusing to say what they're talking about.] pp. 1-119.
900 mothers each year die in childbirth in the U.S., and 65,000 nearly die. There are 4 million births per year in the U.S. U.S. maternal deaths are 3 times the Canadian rate, 6 times the Scandinavian rate. pp. 120, 123, 144. The fragmented medical system makes it harder for new mothers, especially those without good insurance, to get the care they need. p. 124. Medicaid pays the medical costs of 45% of births in the U.S. The House of Representatives in 2018 passed a bill to gut Medicaid [the Senate did not]. p. 125. As recently as 2012, you could become an OB-GYN M.D. in the U.S. without learning to care for birthing mothers. p. 126. pp. 120-149.
Unintended victims of U.S. wars in the Mideast, 2003-2017. pp. 150-185.
2011.03 massacre of townspeople in Allende, Mexico, by the Zetas drug cartel, after the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency told the Zetas' pet cops that someone snitched. pp. 186-219.
Russian revolutions, 1825- . Published in /Smithsonian/ magazine. [U.S.-Government-funded.] pp. 220-269.
The Uninhabitable Earth. David Wallace-Wells. The imminent climate catastrophe. pp. 270-292. In January 2018, the North Pole was 70° warmer than normal. p. 271. The last time the Earth was 4°C warmer, sea level was hundreds of feet higher. p. 274. --Peter Brannen, /The Ends of the World/. Four of the five previous mass extinctions were caused by climate change produced by greenhouse gas. 252 million years ago, 5°C of warming released the arctic methane and killed 97% of life on Earth. p. 287. We are now adding carbon to the atmosphere at 10 times the rate then. No plausible emissions reduction can avert disaster. pp. 274-275. Humans can't live in 105°F at 90% humidity. p. 276. The European 2003 heat wave killed 2,000 people a day. p. 277. A heat index of 163°F was seen in 2015 in the Mideast. Salvadoran sugar-cane workers have chronic kidney disease from heat. In June 2018, it's 121°F in Southern California. pp. 277-278. Food-growing regions are desertifying. p. 279. Unfrozen arctic animal remains release the diseases they died of into today's populations. p. 280. Tropical diseases spread as tropical heat expands. p. 281. Five billion people will be exposed to malaria by 2050. p. 281. One-third of deaths in China in 2013 were from smog. p. 283. [I'm sure he's right about all this, though it often seems he's overstating his case.]
"My President Was Black," Ta-Nehisi Coates. pp. 294-344. [Yes, but he was a servant of Wall Street.]
National Football League, 2017-2018 season. pp. 346-377.
Race and "culture" [the Oscars, television talk shows, pro sports]. pp. 378-407
First Class: The U.S. Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat, Christopher W. Shaw, 2021, 229 pp., ISBN 9780872868779, Dewey 383.4973
An ouFirst Class: The U.S. Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat, Christopher W. Shaw, 2021, 229 pp., ISBN 9780872868779, Dewey 383.4973
An outstanding view of what is happening to the US Postal Service and why.
BUILD IT UP Rural Free Delivery became nationwide in 1902, despite its cost. p. 16. [Other government departments are likewise not expected to fund themselves.]
From the 1850s until Parcel Post began in 1913, a price-gouging cartel monopolized package delivery, providing inadequate service at extortionate rates. In 1910, Wells Fargo paid its stockholders a 300% dividend. Parcel Post delivered 300 million parcels its first 6 months, faster and cheaper than its rivals. pp. 16-17.
Rural Free Delivery and Parcel Post were acts of empowerment for rural Americans. p. 18.
Public institutions threaten profiteering. p. 18
Eliminating the one federal agency that directly serves citizens daily would go far toward eliminating government services altogether. p. 19.
The Republican-majority Postal Board of Governors appointed Republican donor and labor-law-violating trucking-firm owner Louis DeJoy as postmaster general in 2020. DeJoy immediately degraded service. Federal judges, concerned about vote-by-mail, pushed back. pp. 23, 88, 98-99.
Airline deregulation led to mergers, frequent bankruptcies, cramped seating, fewer nonstop flights, more charges, less service, nonrefundable tickets, and no more competition. p. 28. More than 300 airports lost commercial airline service altogether. p. 29. After intercity bus deregulation, Greyhound abandoned 1,313 communities, and raised fares 25%. Greyhound acquired its only competitor. Now in North Dakota it stops only in Fargo, on the Minnesota border. p. 30. Now more than 20% of rural Americans have no intercity bus service.
The European Union in 1998 required member states to end their postal monopolies. p. 32. New Zealand deregulated post in 1998. 906 post offices were reduced to 103. Sweden ended its mail monopoly in 1993. It now has no post offices. p. 33. Rural delivery is twice a week. Government subsidy will be needed to continue postal service at all. Some rural Norwegians must now travel for hours to pick up their mail. p. 34.
A major goal of privatization is to end a successful public institution. p. 35. The United Kingdom's Royal Mail is being deliberately destroyed. It was privatized in 2013, despite opposition by two-thirds of Britons. It was sold for much less than its value. 6,750 post offices were closed. Remaining ones are government-subsidized.
Deregulation would be even worse in the U.S. because it is so vast, and urban/rural and rich/poor disparities so great. (The U.K. has about the land area of Oregon.) p. 37.
In 1859, the U.S. Post Office Department spent $1.2 million delivering mail by stagecoach to California, and earned only $34,497 for it. p. 37. Before the transcontinental telegraph and railroad, this subsidization linked the Pacific Coast to the rest of the country.
In the early 1800s, the Post Office earned most of its revenue from business-to-business letters in the Northeast, subsidizing newspaper and rural mail. Private carriers began skimming some of that lucrative business. Congress reasserted control in 1845 by reaffirming the Post Office's monopoly, and slashing postage rates. p. 38.
The Southern gentlemen governing the Confederacy hated taxes and government services as much as today's rich do. They demanded the Confederate postal service be self-sufficient. So rates were high, service was poor, soldiers and civilians had lower morale due to few letters and little reliable news. p. 40.
A private company can go out of business. Executives of Montana Power Company in 1997 sold the business, started and failed a telecom, took bankruptcy, and made off with millions of dollars. p. 41. Montanans' utility bills soared.
U.S. Government-subsidized magazine postage in the early 1900s helped "muckrakers" reach millions of readers, who clamored for reform, such as of unsanitary meatpacking, and usurious monopoly rail rates. pp. 47-48.
SHUT IT DOWN USPS has closed half its post offices, relocated thousands of others away from foot-traffic downtowns to automobile-only outskirts, and reduced window hours. All, ostensibly, to save minuscule amounts of money--violating federal law, which requires that post offices not be closed merely because they sell fewer stamps than their operating costs. Costing customers much more than USPS saves, in driving, waiting, inconvenience, lack of timely delivery. Costing small-town businesses the walk-in traffic they rely on, for which the post office was the anchor. Chapter 4. USPS is selling its impressive, historic downtown post-office buildings to undo the work of the New Deal. These are sold for less than they're worth. Often, USPS then leases space in the building, at excessive rental prices. And, USPS will maintain the building it no longer owns, at its own expense. These are not decisions that would be made by someone who believes in public service. Much of it violates current federal law. p. 75-78, 96-97, 99. USPS removed half its collection boxes. p. 85.
FOR WHOM? The big cut-rate mailers, big competitors, and big contractors have a seat at the postal decision-making table. The American people do not. pp. 88, Chapter 8. Valpak Coupons weighs in on every case before the Postal Regulatory Commission, demanding minimum service for everyone, for minimum rates for itself. pp. 89-91, 94-95, 97, Chapter 6. Airlines successfully lobbied Congress to prohibit USPS from operating its own airplanes. Yet airlines focus on passenger service; hauling mail is a low priority. pp. 103-104, 165. USPS ended up giving contracts worth billions of dollars to FedEx and UPS to fly the mail. p. 109. FedEx pays $0 in taxes. FedEx has been granted a monopoly on hauling air cargo between the U.S. and China. FedEx and UPS pushed for the Trans-Pacific partnership, which would outlaw any national law or regulation that has the effect of limiting corporate profit. pp. 105, 107. FedEx spent $42 million successfully lobbying Congress to prevent its workers from unionizing. pp. 105-106. UPS spent $68 million lobbying from 2010-2019, successfully killing ergonomic standards and regulations designed to reduce repetitive-stress injuries. p. 106. UPS and FedEx fight hard and successfully to keep the US Postal Service as noncompetitive as possible. p. 107. UPS is trying to prohibit USPS from providing parcel service at all. FedEx wants USPS to cease to exist. pp. 108-109. Only the US Postal Service delivers to every address. If private oligopolies again capture all the business, they can again gouge their customers and/or reduce service, with impunity. Parcel-mail revenue is necessary to keep USPS in business, now that banks and businesses no longer have to send statements and bills by first-class mail. p. 110. A business lobby got Congress to prohibit USPS from offering coin-operated photocopy machines. p. 113. Private packing stores succeeded in prohibiting USPS from offering packing service at competitive rates. p. 114.
NO MAILGRAM Businesses have succeeded since the 1950s in prohibiting USPS from offering an electronic mailgram service: "Want to send a document? Let us electronically transmit it: We'll print it at, and deliver it from, the destination post office." This would be the biggest boon to post since paper. It would have the impact of paper, with 1-day service everywhere. It would be popular and profitable. It would lessen the need to haul paper around the country. Businesses from Western Union to FedEx have made sure it doesn't happen. pp. 114-117. The 2006 law kept USPS from offering new services, period. p. 117.
PRIVATIZED PRESORT USPS has already largely privatized mail sorting, creating a low-wage presort industry by offering deep discounts on bulk business mail. By law, discounts cannot exceed costs USPS avoids by accepting presorted mail. In fact, discounts greatly exceed costs avoided. USPS has built the processing plants, bought and installed the equipment, and hired the staff necessary to handle peak volume. When volume is less than peak, the costs of processing the mail have already been paid. To pay Pitney Bowes or United Mailing to sort mail while the USPS processing and distribution center is operating below capacity, avoids few costs. Moreover, the mail USPS receives from the presort houses must then be resorted into carrier-route sequence along with all the rest of the mail. Presort houses are able to work cheaply only by paying less than living wages. pp. 136-137. Public assistance to low-wage, low-benefit Walmart employees costs federal, state, and local governments $6 billion per year. Employees of presort houses are in the same boat. p. 138.
GOVERNMENT LIKE A CORPORATION If USPS management succeeds in destroying USPS's ability to process peak volume, more mail will enter the building than can leave; mail will stop moving. It happened in the main Chicago office in 1966. pp. 141-142. The 1966 Chicago mail logjam ostensibly justified a presidential commission, of corporate executives, who said, make the postal service like a corporation. Not beholden to citizens. Decisions dictated by top management, controlled by a board of directors, composed of business executives. The particular logistical problems the Chicago logjam exposed were not addressed by changing the goals and governance of the organization away from public service and toward enriching private corporations. Chapter 8. Postal governance is now expressly political: the nine governors and five commissioners, by law, have up to five and three, respectively, of the same political party. In recent decades, this has meant a Republican majority, which "post-partisan" Obama appointed too. The current (2022) board, including postmaster general and deputy, comprises 5 Republicans, 4 Democrats, and 2 independents, with the fifth Republican having been appointed by Biden. Democratic presidents get their campaign money from, so owe allegiance to, lords of Wall Street, just as Republicans do. Even the Democratic appointees have largely led cheers for using government to help enrich corporate owners. Representatives of citizens and workers have been conspicuously absent. Unelected governors are no less political than congressmen, mostly are no more knowledgeable on, nor interested in, postal issues, but are completely unaccountable to the public, and are even more responsive than Congress is, to the wants of the corporate vultures circling the postal service. pp. 145-158.
CONGRESS BOWS OUT Congress was eager to rid itself of responsibility for postal employees. Reorganization did that. p. 149-150.
WE NEED A LOBBYIST Ralph Nader recognizes the need for a lobbying organization on postal issues, representing the American people, as distinct from representing the financial interests of big mailers, big competitors, big suppliers. Nader /did not/ organize such a lobbying group. No one else has either. pp. 154-158.
Postal leadership serves the advocates of privatization.
FEWER PLANTS, SLOW SERVICE USPS ended overnight local-area delivery in 2015, with plans to reduce what were once some 500 processing and distribution facilities to 135. A piece of magazine-size mail sent from El Paso to El Paso now makes a 760-mile round trip to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Most of the transportation is contracted out, to firms such as Postmaster General DeJoy's. p. 93, 96-98.
READ MORE: See also savethepostoffice.com by Steve Hutkins.
Christopher W. Shaw also wrote an excellent history of banking in the United States, /Money, Power, and the People: The American Struggle to Make Banking Democratic/, 2019. Includes the history of postal banking, and why it is still needed.
Taming the Rascal Multitude: Essays, Interviews and Lectures 1997-2014, Noam Chomsky, 2022, 439 pages, ISBN 9781629638782
Lots here about where we're gTaming the Rascal Multitude: Essays, Interviews and Lectures 1997-2014, Noam Chomsky, 2022, 439 pages, ISBN 9781629638782
Lots here about where we're going and why we're in this handbasket.
Chomsky is uniquely informed on what corporations, plutocrats, and their political servants are up to. He has no special sources of information: he merely obsessively reads the business and political news in several languages. He often points out that what people are demanding really does matter, and that there has been significant progress because of it.
Wall Street owns the politicians of both parties. p. 317-318, 328, 332, 335-338, 345, 380-381.
The U.S. is a rogue state, using military and economic terrorism worldwide. p. 338.
The strong do as they wish, and the weak suffer as they must. --Thucydides. p. 335.
Forty percent of U.S. agribusiness gross income was government subsidy, by 1987. p. 68. Clinton militarized the U.S./Mexico border to keep people out, whose farm livelihoods were destroyed by U.S.-Government-subsidized agricultural commodities dumped on the world market--and to keep out refugees from U.S. terrorist wars in Central America. pp. 197, 343-344, 353.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962, Russian submarine captain Vasily Arkhipov saved the world from nuclear war by defying an order to launch missiles when U.S. destroyers attacked Russian submarines. No one in the U.S. knew this until 2002. pp. 159, 361.
There are much higher priorities for the U.S. government than preventing nuclear war, or than preserving a livable environment. Some of those priorities are to maximize next quarter's profit for the masters of the universe. States are not interested in security. They’re interested in power and the power of the dominant sectors within them. p. 316, 363, https://chomsky.info/20230606-2/
There's been a transfer of wealth from the lower 90 percent of income level to the top 1 percent over the 40 years since Reagan, roughly $50 trillion. https://chomsky.info/20230606-2/ This is the result of deliberate policy choices by U.S. Government officials: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... pp. 380-381.
If some fiction writer imagined a concept of hell, it would be a market society. pp. 378, 383, 389-390.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is part of the biggest giveaway of public assets in history. p. 17. It killed local radio: https://www.35000watts.com/the-teleco...
In the 2000 elections [Bush beat Gore by 537 Florida votes], almost half the electorate did not participate. Voting correlated with income. U.S. voter turnout is among the lowest and most class-skewed in the industrial world. Monied interests focus voter attention on style and personality. p. 126. Voters strongly preferred Gore's policies over Bush's, as they had preferred Carter's policies over Reagan's, but in horse-race campaigning, policy doesn't show. Owners of media companies want, and get, content-free campaign coverage. pp. 126-127, 142-144, 147-148, 337. (view spoiler)[In the 2008 campaign, Sarah Palin's hairdresser received twice the salary of John McCain's foreign policy advisor, probably an accurate reflection of significance for the campaign. p. 285. (hide spoiler)] In seven states, one in four black men is permanently barred from voting; 31% in Florida, 45% in New Mexico. (Alabama, Iowa, Mississippi, Virginia, Wyoming.) These would largely be Democratic votes. Democratic politicians are scared of being called soft on crime, so they keep quiet. pp. 280-282, 320, 372.
The American colonial leaders knew that if the thirteen colonies stayed within English jurisdiction and under British law, pretty soon slavery might be outlawed. It was probably a major factor in the revolution. … The Civil War is still being fought in the United States. Red and blue states. p. 379.
Our last liberal president was Richard Nixon. pp. 8, 124.
One-sixth of U.S. GDP is marketing, largely advertising. 1997. p. 15.
Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business. --John Dewey. p. 176.
/Justice on the Brink: The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Rise of Amy Coney Barrett, and Twelve Months that Transformed the Supreme Court/, Linda G/Justice on the Brink: The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Rise of Amy Coney Barrett, and Twelve Months that Transformed the Supreme Court/, Linda Greenhouse, 2021, 300 pages, Dewey 347.7326090512, ISBN 9780593447932
Clear, engaging, eye-opening. A year in the Supreme Court, 2020.06.30 through 2021.07.01. And, lots about the legal and political background. A good introduction to the major changes in many laws the Roberts court has made and is making: Require girls and women to bear children against their will. Require the government to give money to churches. Exempt anyone who professes a government-recognized religion from laws everyone must obey. Permit people in power who profess religion, to deny other people's rights, in ways that would be impermissible if the boss, owner, or official did not profess religion. Roll back voting rights, civil rights, and the rights of the accused. Erase restrictions on armed people roaming at large (but not in the Supreme Court building). Roll back environmental protections. Enshrine property rights. Slash government's power to regulate. Further curtail labor rights. Greenhouse gives us some glimpses behind the scenes, the justices' arguments among themselves that they don't share with the public. pp. 128-129.
With Ginsburg alive, the court was 5 justices who always want to privilege the privileged and oppress the oppressed (wrongly termed "conservative," including by Greenhouse) to 4 who only sometimes wanted to do so (wrongly termed "liberal.") With Barrett having succeeded Ginsburg, it's 6 to 3. So the outcomes are largely the same. The difference is that Chief Justice John Roberts can no longer insist on a pretense of following precedent. He's now outvoted by 5 extremists openly contemptuous of any principle other than remaking the world as they choose. Roberts is acting to create the same Catholic plutocracy the rest of them are: he just would prefer to do it in a way that he thinks makes him look judicial. pp. 219-220, 233. The 2022 succession of Stephen Breyer by Ketanji Brown Jackson doesn't change the typical 6-3 split. The court was divided 5-4 from the late 1970s until 2020. All the "swing" justices were Republican-appointed, each farther toward "all-for-the-billionaire, nothing-for-the-rest" than the last. p. 234.
As of 2022, there are four women on the court: three who compose the typical voice-of-reason dissent (Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan), and one among the radical-right majority (Amy Coney Barrett).
All six radical-right justices were appointed by Republican presidents; the three moderates are Democratic appointees. (Among the predecessors of the 2022-current nine also, six were appointed by Republicans and three by Democrats.)
1981-2021 Reagan and all subsequent Republican presidents plege to appoint federal judges who would overturn the abortion rights of Roe v Wade. Meaning Catholic. p. 19.
1981-1982 John Roberts, then a lawyer in the Reagan administration, tries to end the Voting Rights Act. p. 5, 162, 234.
1988.02 The Senate confirms President Reagan's nominee, Anthony Kennedy, to the Supreme Court. p. xiii.
1991.10.23 Clarence Thomas, appointed by G.H.W. Bush, succeeds Thurgood Marshall.
1996.06.26 Ginsburg, Stevens, O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Breyer, Rehnquist decide United States v Virginia: Virginia Military Institute must admit qualified women. Scalia dissents. Thomas, whose son attended the school, recuses himself. pp. 43-44.
2002.06.27 Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas decide Zelman: public funds can be used for religious schools. Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer dissent. p. 17.
2005.09.29. John Roberts becomes chief justice, appointed by George W. Bush, succeeding Rehnquist. In the Roberts court, nearly 90 percent of religious claims prevail, vs. about half in the previous 52 years. Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Barrett, all Catholic, and Gorsuch, Episcopalian raised Catholic, all favor the religious side in more than 90% of such cases. p. 19-20.
2006.01.31 Sandra Day O'Connor, the "swing" justice of her time, retires; Samuel Alito, appointed by George W. Bush, succeeds her, wrenching the court to the right on abortion, race, religion, and women's rights. p. 90. O'Connor was the only justice then or later, to have held elective office. p. 238. Before she announced her retirement, she wrote, "When we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government, Americans may count themselves fortunate: Our regard for the constitutional boundaries has protected us from similar travails while allowing private religious exercise to flourish. Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must answer: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?" No current Republican appointee would say any such thing. They are all busily enshrining religion in law. p. 238.
2007.06.28 Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito decide Parents Involved in favor of white parents: integrating schools violated their Constitutional right to equal protection. Stevens, Breyer, Souter, Ginsburg dissent. pp. 5-6, 130-131.
2008.06.26 Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito decide District of Columbia v Heller, creating an individual right to bear arms, where the Constitution grants the right only for state militias. Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer dissent. pp. 170-175.
2009.08.08 Sonia Sotomayor, appointed by Obama, succeeds David Souter. She is the only one on the court to have ever presided over an actual trial. She was a Manhattan assistant district attorney five years, six years as a trial judge in federal district court in New York, and eleven years on the Second Circuit. p. 123.
2010.08.07 Elena Kagan, appointed by Obama, succeeds John Paul Stevens. She had been dean of Harvard Law School (where she hired "conservative" and "liberal" professors), then Obama's solicitor general. p. 228.
2013.06.25 Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito decide Shelby County [Alabama] v [Obama's Attorney General Eric] Holder, nullifying part of the Voting Rights Act. In dissent, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, says that the majority is throwing away our umbrella in a rainstorm because they haven't been getting wet. States rush to impose voting restrictions. pp. 13, 158-164, 224-229, 234.
2014.06.30 Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas decide Hobby Lobby: corporations don't have to provide legally-mandated healthcare coverage if the owner professes religion. Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Breyer, Kagan dissent. p. 23.
2015.06.26 Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan decide Obergefell: states must grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito dissent. pp. 56-58.
2016.02 Justice Antonin Scalia dies. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately announces he won't permit President Obama to fill the vacancy. Nor to fill numerous other vacant federal judgeships. pp. xiii, xxi.
2016.06.27 Breyer, Ginsburg, Kennedy, Sotomayor, Kagan decide Whole Womens' Health: Texas may not impose undue burdens on abortion providers that would require closing half the abortion clinics in Texas. Roberts, Thomas, Alito dissent. p. 27, 189-191.
2016.11 Hillary Clinton loses to Donald Trump. With appointments by a Democratic president, the court would've upheld the right of the unborn to remain unborn to mothers who don't want and can't care for them; would've upheld voting rights, civil rights, and sometimes the rights of the accused. With a democratic socialist president, the appointed justices would also not have granted personhood rights to concentrations of wealth. p. 4, 89.
2017.01 Trump nominates Neil Gorsuch to fill the Scalia vacancy. Senate Republicans abolish the filibuster for Supreme Court appointments, so Democrats can't stop it. Gorsuch joins the court 2017.04.10. pp. xiii-xiv.
2017.05.08 Trump nominates Amy Barrett to a federal judgeship. p. xxi.
2017.06.26 Roberts, Kennedy, Alito, Kagan, Thomas, Gorsuch, Breyer decide Trinity Lutheran v Comer, requiring the state of Missouri to give money to a church. Only Sotomayor and Ginsburg object. pp. 15-16, 217-221.
2017-2020 Trump picks, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell installs, more than 200 federal judges. p. xi.
2018.10.06 Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by Trump, succeeds Anthony Kennedy. pp. xii-xiii.
2020.05.25 Minneapolis police murder unarmed black man George Floyd. The Roberts court will wait until fall to continue undoing civil rights. p. 4.
2020.06.05 Indiana University professor Winnifred Fallers Sullivan publishes a book, /Church State Corporation/, pointing out that the Roberts court has in numerous decisions privileged "the church," and corporations with power to deny legal rights to individuals. Even though "church" nowhere appears in the Constitution. Instead, the First Amendment grants religious rights to /individuals/ not to be required by the government to participate in a particular religion, nor to be prevented by the government from doing so. p. 21.
2020.06.30 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, all Catholics, and Gorsuch, Episcopalian raised Catholic, decide Espinoza v Montana: the state is REQUIRED to give money to religious schools. Ginsburg, Kagan, Breyer (three Jews), and Sotomayor (nonpracticing Catholic) dissent. pp. 16-18, 218-221, 233.
2020.07.08 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Kagan, Breyer decide Our Lady of Guadalupe: Religious schools are allowed to discriminate widely and with impunity for reasons wholly divorced from religious beliefs. Sotomayor and Ginsburg dissent. pp. 21-22, 218-219.
2020.07.08 Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanagh, Kagan, Breyer decide Little Sisters of the Poor: Employers which are religious may deny their employees healthcare coverage. This permits such employers to deny coverage to their 2.9 million employees. Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissent. pp. 26, 88, 126-127.
2020.09.18 Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies. p. xv.
2020.09.26 Trump nominates Amy Coney Barrett. The Senate confirms her 2020.10.26; she joins the court 2020.10.27. pp. xii, 65.
2020.07-2021.01 Trump puts thirteen condemned prisoners to death. Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Barrett (2020.11- ) deny all appeals, consistently rejecting inmates' credible claims for relief. They refuse to consider reasons for a stay of execution, nor to give their reasons for denying a stay, or even vacating an existing stay. This is not justice, say Sotomayor and Ginsburg (2020.07), in dissent. Kagan usually dissents; Breyer often dissents. pp. 90-95, 111-112, 118-123, 144-148, 179-182, 198-201.
2020.11.25 Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v Cuomo: Whatever anyone gets, religion must get too. If people are allowed to shop for groceries, there must be no limit on the number of congregants at a religious service, at whatever cost to public health, in a pandemic, with deaths at record levels, while the Supreme Court itself is meeting by phone. Roberts, Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor dissent. pp. 96-99, 105, 106, 175-179, 255.
2021.01.06 Donald Trump incites a riot in the U.S. capitol in which several people die. p. 116.
2021.02.05 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide South Bay United Pentecostal: California must weaken restrictions on public gatherings by making a special exemption for worship services. Kagan, Breyer, Sotomayor dissent. pp. 141-144.
2021.06.17 Roberts, Thomas, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett (9-0) decide Fulton v Philadelphia: An agency that finds foster parents has a religious right to deny same-sex couples consideration as potential foster parents, in violation of the city's antidiscrimination law. The city cannot refuse to contract with the agency. The government is now no longer neutral on religion. Religious claims now trump all others. "God hates fags" has the force of law. pp. 58, 75, 77-83, 207-221.
2021.06.23 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide Cedar Point Nursery v Hassid: Any entry of a labor-union representative into a workplace is a categorical "taking" of the owner's property that the government cannot mandate without paying the owner. Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan dissent. pp. 221-224.
2021.07.01 Alito, Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide Brnovich v Democratic National Committee: Governments are free to make voting as inconvenient as they choose for racial minorities, Native Americans, people who live in non-affluent neighborhoods, students, anyone likely to vote Democratic. All that the Constitution now requires is that voting be theoretically possible. Kagan, Breyer, Sotomayor dissent. pp. 224-229, 234.
2021.08.13 This book's manuscript finished.
2021.11.09 This book's publication date.
2022.06.23 Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide New York State Rifle & Pistol v Bruen: to carry a pistol in public (but not in the Supreme Court building) is a constitutional right. The state must not ask why the person wants to. Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan dissent. pp. 170-175.
2022.06.24 Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, Roberts decide Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health: Roe v Wade and Casey are invalidated. Government officials may now compel a girl or woman to bring an unwanted child into the world against her will, however early in pregnancy she seeks to end it. Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan dissent. pp. 185-198.
2022.06.30 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide West Virginia v Environmental Protection Agency: EPA must not require power companies to shift to solar or wind. Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan dissent.
2022.06.30 Stephen Breyer retires; Ketanji Brown Jackson, appointed by Biden, joins the court. She's the first justice raised Protestant to be appointed since G.H.W. Bush picked Souter (Episcopalian) in 1990. There are now five practicing Catholics (Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Barrett), one Episcopalian raised Catholic (Gorsuch), one nonpracticing Catholic (Sotomayor) and one Jew (Kagan).
Too bad we couldn't've had a Justice Linda Greenhouse.
"I had nine months to write this book. It took every one of those months, plus the previous four decades of immersion in the life of the Supreme Court as a journalist, writer, and teacher."
Updates:
2022.09.06 Trump's radical-right judges dance to his tune:
Trump-appointed judge Aileen Cannon granted Trump’s request for a special master to review the government documents the FBI recovered from Mar-a-Lago … which could delay the FBI investigation indefinitely ... an appeal would go to the 11th circuit, where Trump appointed 6 of the 11 judges who, if they wished, could further delay the case, and then agree with Cannon. The Department of Justice could then appeal to the Supreme Court: which now has a 6 to 3 Republican majority, three of whom Trump himself appointed. --Heather Cox Richardson https://heathercoxrichardson.substack...
2023.06.01: Court erodes workers' right to strike, in Glacier Northwest v. Teamsters, 8-1: only Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. Pp. 22-48 of the pdf is her dissent: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions...
Workers are not indentured servants, bound to continue laboring until any planned work stoppage would be as painless as possible for their master. They are employees whose collective and peaceful decision to withhold their labor is protected by the NLRA even if economic injury results. pdf p. 47 of 48.
2023.06.30 The Court reversed the secretary of education's provision of debt relief to student-loan borrowers during COVID. Pages 48-77 of the pdf are Justice Elena Kagan's dissent, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions... Heather Cox Richardson's blog on it: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack...
The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), second edition 1968, 527 pages, Dewey 321.9, ISBN 9780156701532.
More than, "Why Hitler? WhyThe Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), second edition 1968, 527 pages, Dewey 321.9, ISBN 9780156701532.
More than, "Why Hitler? Why Stalin?" Truths about violent power; the peculiar organization and psychology of mass movements.
A military-industrial complex is a prerequisite for totalitarianism.
Totalitarian movements are organizations of atomized, isolated individuals. Stalin atomized his people by skilful use of mass murder. pp. 323, 348, 474.
Total domination does not allow for free initiative in any field of life, for any activity that is not entirely predictable. pp. 339, 374. The aim of totalitarian education is not to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any. p. 468.
Totalitarianism is distinct from mere Fascism, authoritarianism, autocracy, dictatorship, despotism, or tyranny. A tyrant deflects criticism onto his subordinates. A Leader can't tolerate criticism of his subordinates, they act in his name. p. 375. A mass leader can never admit an error. p. 349. If he wants to correct his own errors, he must liquidate those who carried them out. p. 375, 412, 422.
The Nazis learned as much from American gangster organizations as their propaganda learned from American business publicity. p. 345. Mass movements operate in a post-truth, post-reality world. pp. 382-385, 388, 391, 474-475.
Up to now (1st edition, 1950) we have just two totalitarian regimes: Bolshevism since 1930, Nazism 1938-1945. p. 419.
Totalitarianism is characterized by purposeless, persistent, mass murder. p. 445. The purpose of the purposeless carnage is total control of the population, and indoctrination of the executioners. pp. 456, 464-468.
Antisemitism became a political platform in Europe. Arendt details how, why, when, where, and who, pp. xi-xvi, xli-xlii, 1-120, 483-491. Imperialism. pp. xvii-xxviii, xlii, 121-302, 491-498. Totalitarianism. pp. xxix-xl, xlii-xliii, 303-479, 499-507.
ANTISEMITISM Anybody in Russia may suddenly become a victim of police terror. p. 6.
Imperial European countries between the French Revolution and World War I came to need more financing than even the Jews could provide. So, Jews lost their power, leading to contempt of them, without losing their wealth, leading to hatred of them. p. 15.
Only in France did the state create mercantile businesses and manufacturers, which could not compete in the free market; yet the state bureaucracy that perpetuates them has persisted. p. 16.
Around 1900, imperialist expansion, improving instruments of violence and state monopoly of them, made the state lucrative for the (nonJewish bourgeois) owning classes. p. 18.
Beginning 1492, Jews were expelled from cities. p. 19. Jews still handled finances for princes. The rise of the nation-state beginning 1789 ended the Jews' status as moneylenders to feudal princes. pp. 20, 51. The last Jew-financed war was Otto von Bismarck's 1866 war with Austria, after the Prussian parliament denied him credit. Only Frankfurt, among great urban centers, never expelled Jews. p. 26. Pre-WWI, sons of wealthy Jews flocked into newspapers, publishing, music, theater, and other liberal professions or intellectual pursuits. p. 52.
Jews had managed peace negotiations, including arranging reparations payments, up through Bismarck's win over the French in 1871. When "victory or death" became policy, the Jews were of no use. p. 21. In 1871, Rothchild supported monarchists, against the existing republican government, which then had no use for him. p. 97.
Jewish moneylenders had been inter-state go-betweens, serving but not considered as belonging to one state. To preserve his house's inter-European status, Meyer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812) set up his five sons in Europe's five financial capitals: Frankfurt, Paris, London, Naples, and Vienna. Beginning 1811, Rothschild monopolized European state loans. p. 26. Rothschild owned the Austrian railroads. p. 43. Rothschild financed the Bourbons, maintained close ties to Louis Philippe, and flourished under Napoleon III. p. 47. The more Disraeli learned about the Jewish bankers' well-functioning organization, the more he saw it as a secret society with the world's destinies in its hands. p. 76.
The lower middle classes of Germany, Austria, and France in the late 1800s lost their government-protected guild status and had to compete with wage-slave products from north England. Trying to rise before they sank, they bet and lost their shirts in financial scandals. They blamed Jews, who were not at fault but only middlemen. pp. 36, 95-99. After 1881, swindle became the only law in France. Every faction sought only defense of vested interests, by any means, preferably corruption. Every political party had a Jewish bagman. p. 98. The decayed state no longer could, and no longer had a need to, protect Jews. p. 99.
Jesuits controlled the Catholic Church's international policy, from 1800 on. Their rule required novices to prove they had no Jewish blood back to the fourth generation. p. 102. Jesuits were determined that there be no army officers immune to the influence of the confessional. p. 103.
The mob is the residue of all classes. pp. 107, 155. It clamors for strongman leadership, as it hates society it is excluded from. French notables and politicians produced the mob in a series of scandals and public frauds. p. 107.
Jews, Jesuits, Freemasons were all seen by the mob as secret societies bent on world domination. p. 108.
Only around 1900, with Russian pogroms, did Jewish poverty enter London. p. 70.
IMPERIALISM 1884-1914 was the period of imperialism: quiet in Europe, shock and awe in Asia and Africa. The bourgeoisie ruled, but didn't seek political power until the state failed to grow the economy. p. 123. With Hitler would come mob rule. p. 124.
In less than 20 years, colonial powers gained: Britain: 4.5M sq. mi, 66M people France: 3.5M sq. mi, 26M people Germany: 1M sq. mi, 13M people Belgium .9M sq. mi, 8.5M people. p. 124.
Trade and economics had already involved every nation in world politics. p. 124.
Conquest and empire had succeeded only where, as with Rome, government was based on law: so the Roman empire imposed a uniform law everywhere. Nation-states by contrast are governed by popularity among a homogeneous people. Colonies of Others can be governed only by tyranny. p. 125. Colonized people are not citizens of the colonizing nation, and are subject to separate laws. p. 127. Colonial-government officials knew that they must rule by tyranny, including massacre. The governments of England, France, and Germany kept colonial governors from going to the extremes that would've been needed to keep the colonies. pp. 133-134, 216.
Imperialism started its politics of expansion for expansion's sake no sooner than around 1884. p. xvii. Imperialism was born when the ruling class of capitalist production came up against national limitations to its economic expansion. p. 126. Capitalism requires constant growth: the owning class imposed this law on their governments, and demanded expansionist foreign policy. p. 126. Imperialist expansion had been touched off by a curious kind of economic crisis, the overproduction of capital and the emergence of "superfluous" money, the result of oversaving, which could no longer find productive investment within the national borders. p. 135. Export of military power followed meekly behind export of money. Fraudulent foreign-investment schemes were rife in the 1870s. p. 135. Only the national military could enable low-risk overseas profit. p. 136. Now power could appropriate wealth, without mutually-beneficial trade and without ethics. p. 137. Unlimited national military power begat unlimited private wealth.
Violence for power's (not law's) sake doesn't stop until there is nothing left to violate. p. 137. Political structures become mere temporary obstacles to ever-growing power. p. 138.
Imperialism is the first stage of rule-by-the-rich. (Not the last stage of capitalism.) p. 138. Greed-is-good first became foreign policy, then domestic policy. p. 138.
LEVIATHAN Competitors must be policed, or one will kill the others. Competition between fully armed business concerns (empires) ends in victory for one and death to the others. p. 126.
If Thomas Hobbes were right that man lacks the capacity for responsibility, and seeks only and always his own advantage, be it by murder or deceit (/Leviathan/, 1651), then no body politic could ever form. Arendt says Hobbes knew that people by nature aren't just evil, but that Hobbes's man /is/ the successful captain of industry. No compassion, most vicious and grasping. A fiend: only dominance or submission are possible. pp. 139-147. It's to protect such men from /each other/ that they require an absolute-power, tyrannical leviathan government. p. 141. Which does not protect the rest of us from them.
If the leviathan government succeeds in destroying all others, it can only destroy itself to restart the never-ending accumulation of power. p. 147.
THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN THE MOB AND CAPITAL Colony-acquisition papered over Europe's troubles; the apparent security was a sham. p. 147.
The human debris that each crisis idled were as unneeded as the parasitical holders of idle wealth. The export of idle men to the U.S., Australia and Canada was a safety valve for England. p. 150. Idle men and idle wealth rushed to South African diamonds and gold in the 1870s and 1880s. p. 151. Together they parasitized Africa for the most superfluous and unreal goods.
Imperialists divided mankind into master and slave races, to unify the mob. Don't think of yourself as the useless lump you are! You're a white man! /We/ are the master race! pp. 152, 155. Politicians believed that only imperialist expansion could unify their class-fragmented nations. Imperialists became parasites on patriotism. The cry for unity was the same as a war cry, yet no one saw that imperialism would be permanent war. p. 153. Imperialism would've necessitated the invention of racism as the excuse for its deeds even if no race-thinking had existed. pp. 183-184.
By 1900 the owning classes owned the civil servants. p. 154.
The Boers of South Africa descend from Dutch people put there around 1650 to supply vegetables and meat for ships to-and-from from India. Boers usurped black tribal rulers, becoming parasites on black labor, which was just enough for the Boers' subsistence. Boers became contemptuous of work. pp. 191-193. By 1923, 10% of these idle Boers lived on charity, their black workers having left them. pp. 194-195. The British idlers who rushed to the gold soon also became parasites on black labor. p. 198.
British holders of idle wealth demanded and received British government protection of their South African investments. So, by 1900, their Jewish financial middlemen were no longer crucial. p. 202. Boers demanded and received whites-only payrolls. p. 204. Jews manufactured furniture and clothing, were shopkeepers, physicians, lawyers, journalists. They /worked/. Not. Done. Work is for blacks and coloreds only, according to white mob mentality. Expel the Jews! pp. 204-205.
Two main political devices of imperialist rule: race (discovered in South Africa) and bureaucracy (discovered in Algeria, Egypt, and India). p. 207. An underprivileged group can by violence create a class lower than itself. Learned in South Africa. p. 206.
TOTALITARIANISM
Mob attitudes were bourgeois attitudes without the hypocrisy. p. 334.
Unemployment in 1932 Germany was near 50%. p. 265. Germans saw Hitler as the lesser evil than Communism or the status quo.
Minorities within nation-states must sooner or later be assimilated or liquidated. p. 273.
Gigantic lies can be established as unquestioned facts; truth can become a matter of power and pressure and infinite repetition. p. 333. Totalitarianism doesn't simply say there's no unemployment--it abolishes unemployment benefits as part of its propaganda. p. 341. When Stalin rewrote the history of the Russian Revolution he destroyed not only existing books and documents but also their authors and readers. pp. 341-342, 353. Stalin took care to say the opposite of what he did, and do the opposite of what he said. p. 362, 415. To be believable, a lie must be enormous. pp. 439, 470-471.
Allies' willingness to compromise with Hitler in Munich and Stalin in Yalta increased the Leaders' hostility. p. 393. The less the internal political opposition, the more terror. pp. 393, 464.
Real power begins where secrecy begins, in totalitarian states. p. 403, 414. The country is run by the secret police.
Arendt leaves untranslated some German, French, Latin, Yiddish, and Italian phrases. (She also knew Greek and Hebrew; she had a Ph.D. by age 23.) pp. vii, xv, xxiii, 4, 32, 33, 36, 63, 79, 80, 86, 87, 102, 104, 113, 118, 125, 129, 137, 144, 146, 158, 162, 171, 173, 175, 212, 264, 275, 278, 279, 280, 283, 289, 321, 334, 335, 336, 360, 422, 440, 443, 451, 459, 462, 464, 470, 471, 475
(I'm relying on online translation:)
Weder dem Vergangenen anheimfallen noch dem Zukünftigen. Es kommt darauf an, ganz gegenwärtig zu sein. = Neither succumb to the past nor to the future. It's all about being present. --Karl Jaspers. vii mutatis mutandis = with the necessary changes having been made. xv, 113 sine ira et studio = without anger and passion xxiii judenrein = Jew-free 4 expressis verbis = explicitly 32 unsere Leute = our people 33 Gründungsschwindel = founding scam: founding a stock company with borrowed money; repaying after registering the company, so it actually has no capital. 36 primi inter pares = firsts among equals 63, 162 neque in toto orbi alicui nationi inservimus = neither in the whole world do we serve any nation 63 corpo = body 63 la capitale du dixneuvième siècle = capital of the 19th century 79 citoyen = citizen 79, 144 fin-de-siècle = end-of-century (here meaning around 1900) 79, 81, 86 apologia pro vita sua = apology for his life 80, 86, 87 bordereaux = classified military documents 101, 104 homines religiosi = prophets or saints 102 sub iudice = being litigated 104 schnorrer = freeloader 118 Ostjuden = Jews from Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, Romania, Hungary, Moldova. 118 le plébiscite de tous les jours = the daily referendum 125 Périssent les colonies si elles nous en coûtent l'honneur, la liberté. = Perish the colonies if they cost us Honor, Liberty. 125 ius = right 129 imperium = government 129 force noire = black force (African colonial conscripts) 129 ultima ratio = final thought 137 summum bonum = highest good 144 raison d'état = reason of state: justification for a nation's foreign policy on the basis that the nation's own interests are primary. 146, 321 Weltanschauung = worldview 158, 336, 470 la raison est de tous les climats = reason is of all climates 162 Tiers Etat = third state = everyone who wasn't clergy or noble. The politically powerful ones were (are) the bourgeoisie. 162 taedium vitae = weariness of life 171 fils des rois = sons of kings 175 tertium comparationis = third part of the comparison = commonality 212 volte-face = about-face = reversal of policy 264 modus vivendi = way of life 275 cuius regio, eius religio = whose realm, their religion = the ruler sets the religion 275 la capitale des apatrides = the capital of stateless people 278 manquant gravement à leurs devoirs de citoyen belge = seriously failing in their duties as Belgian citizens 279 quid quid est in territorio est de territorio = what is in the territory is of the territory 280 réfugié provenant d'Allemagne = refugee from Germany 283 Heimatlose = homeless 289 la trahison des clercs = the betrayal of the clerics 334 épater le bourgeois = impress the bourgeois 334 erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral = food comes first, then morality 335 Dreigroschenoper = Threepenny Opera 335 bagatelles pour un massacre = trifles for a massacre 335 esprit de sérieux = spirit of seriousness 336 Volksgemeinschaft = national community 360, 422 parcere subjectis = spare the subjects 440 les jours de notre mort = the days of our death 443 Volksnutzen = public benefit 451 homo homini lupus = a man is a wolf to another man 459 consensus iuris = law by consent 462 lumen naturale = natural light 462 ius naturale = natural law 464 Ordensburgen = schools for Nazi elite 471 homo faber = man the maker, or workingman 475
Hannah: repeat after Mark Twain: Keep your feelings where you can reach them with the [English] dictionary!
Ambiguous: p. 57: where she says, "turn of the 18th century" she means around 1800. p. 211: "Strange and curious lands attracted the best of England's youth since the end of the 19th century." She surely means much longer ago.
See also: /The Rise of the House of Rothschild/, Egon Cesar Conte Corti, 1927. /The Emergence of the Jewish Problem, 1878-1939/, James Parkes, 1946, chapters iv, vi. Gilbert Keith Chesterton: /The Crimes of England/, 1915; /The Return of Don Quixote/, 1927.
The Penguin Book of American Folk Songs, Compiled and Edited with Notes by Alan Lomax: 111 ballads, sea shanties, love songs, lullabies, reels, work sThe Penguin Book of American Folk Songs, Compiled and Edited with Notes by Alan Lomax: 111 ballads, sea shanties, love songs, lullabies, reels, work songs, cowboy songs, and spirituals popular in America from Colonial days to modern times. Piano Arrangements by Elizabeth Poston, guitar chords. 1964. 159 pages. Dewey 784.4
16 Yankee songs
18 Southern mountain songs
Includes this version of "Darlin', you can't love one," p. 54: Darlin, you can't love one (x2), You can't love one and have any fun, Darlin' … Darlin, you can't love two (x2), You can't love and to me be true, Darlin' … Darlin, you can't love three (x2), You can't love three and get along with me, Darlin' … Darlin, you can't love four (x2), You can't love four and come knocking at my door, Darlin' … Darlin, you can't love five (x2), You can't love five and get honey from my hive, Darlin' … Darlin, you can't love six (x2), You can't love six and keep me in this fix, Darlin' … Darlin, you can't love seven (x2), You can't love seven and expect to go to heaven, Darlin' … Darlin, you can't love eight (x2), You can't love eight and keep this business straight, Darlin' … Darlin, you can't love nine (x2), You can't love nine and see me all the time, Darlin' … Darlin, you can't love ten (x2), You can't love ten and be welcome here again, Darlin' …
18 Lullabies and reels
including Go to sleepy, little baby, p. 54 Mockingbird, p. 54 Frog went a-courtin', p. 61 Get along home, Cindy, p. 69
19 Spirituals and work songs
including Cherry Tree Carol, p. 77 Poor wayfaring stranger, p. 78 Nobody knows the trouble I see, p. 79
14 Western songs
including Whoopie-ti-yi-yo p. 107
26 Modern times
including The Midnight Special, p. 125 Hallelujah, I'm a Bum, p. 129, parody of Baptist hymn, Hallelujah, Thine the Glory St. James Infirmary, p. 134 The Titanic, p. 136 Worried Man, p. 137 Irene Goodnight, p. 138 Which Side Are You On?, p. 139 Blowin' down the Road, p. 140
American Folk Guitar Style, including chords and rhythms, pp. 147-151
Thomas Ray
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