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
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...
The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam, Michael G. Vann (1967- ), author, and Liz Clarke (1982- ), illustThe Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam, Michael G. Vann (1967- ), author, and Liz Clarke (1982- ), illustrator, 2019, 263 pages, ISBN 9780190602697, Library-of-Congress DS559.93 .HV36 V38 2019 Memorial Library
This is a "microhistory." He uses the failed 1902 plague-carrying rat eradication to introduce imperialism, globalization, and pandemic disease. The first 122 pages are an engaging history of French imperial domination of Hanoi, in comic-book format. Then after a set of primary sources, mostly from the dawn of the 20th century, Vann gives us 33 pages of what he calls, "historical contexts." These introduce the world history leading to French control of Indochina. Accessible; suitable for kids.
The 1902 rat hunt itself is on pages 89-96. It was ineffective. The plague pandemic eventually subsided; cholera and other diseases became bigger problems.
Maps pp. ii, 21, 31-34, 37-40, 43, 49, 55, 66-67, 73, 75, 78-81, 93, 103, 108, 111, 121, 201, 220
Pages 1-122 history in comic-book format.
Pages 123-195 primary sources, 1887-1996. "Always ask yourself if you can trust these sources." p. 127.
Pages 197-231 historical contexts: The New Imperialism Western Industrial Capitalism The Third Republic (France, 1870-1940) Vietnamese Resistance: Nationalist, Communist, and Everyday The Third Bubonic Plague Pandemic, 1855-1959
Pages 233-243 "the making of this book."
Pages 247-250 discussion questions. If you were going to read this book as a student, you'd want to read these first, and write down their answers as you come to them in the book.
Pages 251-255 timeline of Vietnamese dynasties.
Pages 256-263 annotated bibliography.
541-767 First bubonic-plague pandemic: up to 50 million die. p. 73. 1096-1291 Crusades expose Europe to the riches of Asia. p. 32 1346-1835 Second bubonic-plague pandemic: up to 200 million die. p. 73. by 1820, Indian opium sold in China flows silver to Britain. p. 34. 1839-1842 First Opium War, begins China's century of humiliations. pp. 35, 253. 1855-1959 Third bubonic-plague pandemic: up to 15 million die. pp. xiv, 73, 227-231, 253. 1857-1860 Second Opium War: France enters Indochina. pp. 37, 253. 1869 Suez Canal open. p. 36. 1870-1940 French Third Republic. pp. 217-221. 1871 Germany takes Alsace and Lorraine from France; Germany unifies. p. 202. 1882 French seize Hanoi pp. 13, 39, 253 1901 Plague in Hanoi 1902.04.25-1902.07.10; 1903.04.03-1904.02.22 Bounty on rats in Hanoi. pp. 89-96, 104. 1929-1939 Great Depression disrupts colonial economy; mass unemployment. p. 110. 1930.10 Ho Chi Minh organizes Indochinese Communist Party. p. 110. 1940-1945 Japan captures Indochina and the Dutch East Indies. p. 111. 1941 Ho Chi Minh organizes Viet Minh to fight all foreign occupiers. p. 111. 1946-1954 First (French) Indochina War. p. 254. 1963-1973 Second (American) Indochina War. p. 254. 1995 Diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the U.S. established. p. 255. 1995 Vietnam joins ASEAN. p. 120. 1997, 2014 Michael G. Vann visits Hanoi. pp. 117-122.
Books:
Empires and Colonies in the Modern World: A Global Perspective, Heather E. Streets-Salter, Trevor R. Getz, 2015.
Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, William Cronon, 1991. Shows that no city is an island. Chicago exists because of the Midwest, sending agricultural products to the city, and getting manufactured goods from it. p. 199.
[In that regard, The Penguin Atlas of Medieval History, 1961, shows that, when trade collapses, cities evaporate. Covers Europe, West Asia, and North Africa, 362 CE to 1478 CE. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ]
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.
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.
Thomas Ray
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