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."
Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street while Rescuing Wall Street, Neil Barofsky, 2012, 270 pages, Dewey 338.97302, ISBN 9781451684933
The authoBailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street while Rescuing Wall Street, Neil Barofsky, 2012, 270 pages, Dewey 338.97302, ISBN 9781451684933
The author was the special inspector general for the Troubled Assets Relief Program, the 2008 Wall Street bailout.
2019 update: the $700 billion Wall Street bailout ended up costing $16 trillion. --/Money, Power, and the People: The American Struggle to Make Banking Democratic/, Christopher W. Shaw, 2019: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Top financial-institution executives know that the U.S. Government will bail them out if their bets lose. Wall Street has captured control of the U.S. Government. p. 19. [Obama had to kiss Wall Street's ring to get the campaign money to win the presidency, as Charles Gasparino details in /Bought and Paid For/: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .] Obama filled his administration with bankers and let them give hundreds of billions of dollars to their firms to recover their losses from their fraudulent transactions. Same as George W. Bush's team did. pp. 90-95. Every secretary of the Treasury has a callous indifference to the public interest and a slavish bias toward Wall Street. As does the president who appointed him. p. 149.
PERVERSE INCENTIVE
Subprime loans earned the lender higher interest and fees than prime loans. The less chance the borrower had of repaying, the more the lender received. No one on Wall Street--rating agencies, accountants, banks, lawyers, brokers, notaries, appraisers, …--cared to look at fraud, as long as they were getting fat fees. pp. 13-16, 84-95.
WANT TO BET?
The big banks created, marketed, and sold (purportedly AAA but in fact junk) bonds they expected to plummet in value as the real estate market soured; the banks placed large bets that their bonds would tank; the banks reaped profits from their dishonest bond sales. The Bush and Obama administrations appointed the bankers to administer hundreds of billions of dollars of bailouts to their banks. pp. 91-95.
I OWE HOW MUCH?
The orgy of subprime and subsubprime lending ballooned Americans' mortgage debt from $5.3 trillion in 2001 to $10.5 trillion in 2007. p. 87. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=...
USELESS GOVERNMENT
U.S. Government procedure for investigations: "adopt a narrative:" define the status quo as a success. Bury all evidence suggesting otherwise. pp. 8-9. The bailout administrators ignored the many ways fraudsters could steal the money. p. 22. The Treasury Department gave banks hundreds of billions of dollars with no verification that the banks were "healthy and viable," no oversight, no terms or conditions to comply with. pp. 71-77. Inspectors general behave as lapdogs to the agencies they're supposed to watch. p. 61. Congressmen and senators enact laws without reading them. pp. 50, 96. Senators questioning administration officials don't care what the answer is. They care only about getting their question on the news. p. 30. "I had done one of the stupidest things possible. I had trusted someone." pp. 79-80. The FBI tips off the press ahead of search warrants and arrests. p. 108. If a program is unpopular, give it a new name. p. 123.
GOVERNMENT AGENCY PRIORITIES
1. Maintaining and hopefully increasing their budget. 2. Giving the appearance of activity. 3. Not making too many waves. p. 51.
PLAY TO WIN
The only way to make things happen in Washington is to make sure that Congress and the public are aware of the problems you see, so they can then pressure the agency to resolve them. The media are key. p. 65. In Washington, being loud is a virtue p. 104.
WILL 2008 REPLAY 1929?
2008: Mortgage fraud is epidemic. p. 14.
2008: 2.3 million foreclosures. p. 4.
Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers failed due to investments in bad mortgages. pp. 17-18, 142.
September 2008: Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are about to collapse. p. 25. If all the dominoes fall, there could be another Great Depression. p. 43.
AMERICANS LOSE
September 2007 to December 2008: people's 401(k)s lost $2.8 trillion, 1/3 of their value. p. 4.
October 2008: Congress passes Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), a $700 billion Wall Street bailout. pp. 1, 103-104.
October 2008: Hank Paulson, George W. Bush's secretary of the Treasury and former CEO of Goldman Sachs, /gives/ the 9 largest banks (view spoiler)[(Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, State Street, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Bank of New York Mellon) (hide spoiler)]$125 billion, instead of using the money to buy bad mortgages, as Congress wanted. p. 26. The total was $290 billion by November. By December, AIG and Citigroup would be bailed out again, along with General Motors, Chrysler, and Bank of America. pp. 43, 102-105.
November 2008: Obama wins election.
EXECUTIVE BAILOUT
AIG gave its executives $168 million in bonuses. pp. 60, 138.
WHERE'S THE MONEY?
Banks did not lend out the money they were bailed out with. So the bailouts did not help end the recession, did not help businesses nor homeowners. pp. 72-73, 98-99.
DEMOCRATS ARE NO BETTER
January 2009: Obama becomes president. Banker Timothy Geithner, Treasury secretary, dismisses efforts to protect TARP from fraud. p. 113.
HOMEOWNERS NOT BAILED OUT
Though $50 billion was allocated ostensibly to help homeowners, it did not reduce the amounts they owed on their mortgages, and provided no relief to unemployed homeowners. It was a boon to the financial industry, in new fees they could charge. p. 128.
April 2010: Obama's troubled-assets relief program administrator, Wall Street banker Herb Allison, advises Neil Barofsky, the government's special inspector general (SIGTARP), that Barofsky has a choice: make the financial power brokers look good and get a plum job, or tell the truth and end up discredited and unemployed. pp. xi-xvi.
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
The Aerodynamics of Heavy Vehicles: Trucks, Buses, and Trains
ISBN 9783540220886 is the 2004 compilation of the papers of the first, 2002, conference, The Aerodynamics of Heavy Vehicles: Trucks, Buses, and Trains
ISBN 9783540220886 is the 2004 compilation of the papers of the first, 2002, conference, edited by Rose McCallen, Fred Browand, and James Ross.
Includes "Aerodynamics and Other Efficiencies in Transporting Goods," Paul MacCready (1925-2007)
Cited by Yanis Varoufakis in Modern Political Economics, pp. 72-73, 466, 509:
MacCready calculated that, as of 1999, humans plus our livestock and domestic animals compose 98% of the mass of all land vertebrates. And rapidly rising! (Most of that is cattle.)
Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America, Heather Cox Richardson, 2023, 286 pages, ISBN 9780593652961, Dewey 320.473
Outstanding history of tDemocracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America, Heather Cox Richardson, 2023, 286 pages, ISBN 9780593652961, Dewey 320.473
Outstanding history of the past few decades of U.S. politics. Focuses on Trump and the danger of authoritarianism. Recaps U.S. history to show that authoritarianism isn't us.
In 1987, members of the Federal Communications Commission appointed by Reagan ended the Fairness Doctrine, which had protected public information since the earliest days of radio, in the 1920s. In order to get a public license, a radio station had to agree to present information honestly and fairly and to balance different points of view. Movement Conservatives demanded an end to the Fairness Doctrine. By 1988, talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh had gone national. Fox News began shortly thereafter. pp. 54-55. Republicans had created an underclass of Americans falling behind economically. They then gave that underclass someone to hate. p. 57.
Richardson sees Republicans in black hats, Democrats in white.
But, Democrats are also eager to take no meaningful action on climate change; to take military action provoking enmity; to serve concentrated wealth. [See Noam Chomsky, What Uncle Sam Really Wants, 1992, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ]
Except on judicial appointments. The six Republican appointees on the Supreme Court are terrorists; the three Democratic appointees are comparatively reasonable. [See Justice on the Brink, Linda Greenhouse, 2021, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ]
Authoritarians rise when members of a formerly powerful group feel they've been left behind. p. xii. [See Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1968, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ]
Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters. --Grover Cleveland, 1889. p. 223, chapter 28. Wall Street owns the country. --Mary Elizabeth Lease, 1890. p. 224. Businessmen had bought and paid for politicians and the media to concentrate the nation's wealth in their own hands. p. 226. [See Origins of the Federal Reserve System: Money, Class, and Corporate Capitalism, 1890–1913, James Livingston, 1986: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ]
Heather Cox Richardson writes a wonderful summary of today's news (she's been posting at about 2am Chicago time every day; about once a week she takes a day off: "Today was an absolutely perfect July day and I'm not going to ruin it by looking at the news."--https://heathercoxrichardson.substack... ) at https://heathercoxrichardson.substack... Except, bizarrely, she doesn't know that (view spoiler)[the Clinton-Clinton-Obama-Biden-Harris party /always/ serves the investor class, to our cost. Biden forced Mexico to consume Monsanto genetically-modified corn: (English & Spanish: https://www.jornada.com.mx/notas/2023... ). Clinton quietly sent bankers to arrange world trade deals that race to the bottom in environmental and worker protections, to enrich bankers and multinationals. Clinton quietly exploded the prison population. Obama quietly took /no/ action on climate change, quietly rolled out a lobbyist-written medical-insurance plan that authorizes insurers to charge us 25% more than they pay providers: they're on cost-plus, for the first time ever. Obama quietly amplified the Asian wars, and vastly expanded drone warfare. Obama quietly bailed out Wall Street and left the rest of us to fend for ourselves. We can have Wall Street's left-hand puppet quietly serving up the world to the rich, saying, "yes we can!" or, "I'm the change agent!" Or we can have Wall Street's right-hand puppet doing the exact same things, loudly railing against "illegals," "socialists," "liberals", "Eurocrats." To read Heather Cox Richardson, that choice is enough. It is not. Democrats have proven they will do nothing to curb climate change, will not tax the rich, will continue to enact lobbyist-written laws they haven't read. Sure, Republicans are even worse. Democrats do not deserve the free pass Richardson gives them, merely for not being Republicans.
[image]
Even FDR, who did more than any other president to make the playing field between the rich and the rest of us less vertical, did so largely by using our Pacific fleet to prevent fuel from entering Japan, to force Japan to go to war with us, so U.S. corporations, not Japan, would control the former European Pacific and Southeast Asian colonies. (hide spoiler)]
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.
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.
Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, Vijay Prashad, Frank Barat, ed., 2022, 162 pages, Dewey 335, ISBN 9781642596908
Lots abStruggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, Vijay Prashad, Frank Barat, ed., 2022, 162 pages, Dewey 335, ISBN 9781642596908
Lots about how the wealthy powerful few have plundered the rest of us. With attempts at optimism.
Victories:
Hugo Chávez won the presidency of Venezuela in 1998, established a new constitution, and fended off a coup in 2002. Lula won in Brazil in 2003. Bolivians voted Socialists in, in 2019. Hondurans voted out the U.S.-sponsored coup regime in 2021. pp. 2-3. Indian farmers won repeal of anti-farmer laws in 2021. p. 4. The USSR pioneered public medical care, guaranteed housing and education. Producer cooperatives in Kerala have millions of members. Brazil's Landless Workers' Movements are building socialism through education and cooperative farming. The future is here. pp. 116, 153. Cuba's literacy rate is 99%; the U.S. adult literacy rate is 79%. p. 154.
I thank the trade union movement for the weekend. p. 47.
A better future is possible. p. 71.
If the iPhone were made entirely in the U.S., it would sell for $30,000. Who pays for the discount to $699? The people of the copperbelt, in very low wages and barely any social wages for schools and hospitals. p. 104.
Debt cancellation is the #1 issue. Cancel the $11 trillion debt of the global victims of imperialism to the northern banks. p. 117.
xviii Extreme weather events that were once seen as acts of God can now be seen as acts of humankind.
xxi A bipartisan effort to do nothing has been wildly successful. The Clinton-Gore administration oversaw the conversion of the American vehicle fleet from cars to semimilitary vehicles, with 15% more heat-trapping emissions. [If manufacturers build cars, they must meet high corporate-average fuel-economy standards. If they build vehicles on truck chassis, they need meet only low CAFE standards. In either case, to earn the right to sell a large, safe vehicle to a wealthy anti-environmentalist, they must sell a smaller, less-safe vehicle to a poorer person or to an environmentalist. Corporate-average fuel-economy standards began in 1975; they've been revised several times, but the above has always been true.]
xxii Our crusade, if we ever mount it, will be on behalf of a relatively-livable world: not on behalf of the world we were born into. There's no getting it back.
He wrote the introduction, above, in 2005. His 1989 book follows, with my updates from 2021 NASA, NOAA, & other websites.
4 Evolution has taken billions of years to create us from slime. [Progress? Or not?]
8-9 Scientists have known since the 1800s that increasing heat-trapping gasses in the atmosphere, as we were even then doing, could dramatically warm Earth's atmosphere. They've known since 1957 that the ocean can absorb very little excess CO2.
15 Atmospheric methane concentration has increased from 1630 ppb in 1983 to 1995 ppb in 2021. In the past 160,000 years, levels fluctuated from 300 ppb to 700 ppb. The rate of increase has increased to 15 ppb per year. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/ Due to melting permafrost, deliberate burning of Amazonia, rice paddies, cattle, termites, forest fires. Methane (CH4) traps much more heat per unit weight or per molecule than CO2 traps.
16 Warmer air holds more water vapor, itself a potent greenhouse gas.
30 Heat, drought, storms, insects and fungi are killing forests. Germany: https://www.deutschland.de/en/topic/e... United States: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti... (The German file is a straight, "here are the facts." The U.S. researchers focus on themselves, to emphasize their value and their need for continued funding.)
35 The vision of underarm-deodorizing our way to destruction led to a U.S. ban on chlorofluorocarbons as aerosol propellant.
38 If ozone levels fall 20%, 2 hours in the sun will blister exposed skin.
39 The Roman Empire meant nothing to the Arctic or the Amazon. Now, we alter every inch of the globe.
49 Cattle graze 70% of Western federal land, producing 3% of America's beef. The leasing program doesn't pay for itself; it's tax-subsidized. The cattle destroy the natural plants and wildlife, and erode the soil. [And turn dry grassland to desert.]
60 In 1890, the American frontier closed, with the extirpation of the last free Native Americans. --Frederick Jackson Turner. https://www.goodreads.com/author/list...
Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media, Michael Parenti (1933- ), 2nd edition 1993 (there is a rumored 2022 edition that seems not to be availaInventing Reality: The Politics of News Media, Michael Parenti (1933- ), 2nd edition 1993 (there is a rumored 2022 edition that seems not to be available), 274 pages, ISBN 0312020139
The major role of the press is to continually recreate a view of reality supportive of existing social and economic class power. p. 8.
This book predates the 1996 launch of Fox News. Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp are mentioned only as among the obscenely few, obscenely wealthy, dictators of newsworthiness. Reagan's Federal Communications Commission ended the Fairness Doctrine in 1987: Rush Limbaugh and others rushed to spew lies and hate--but Parenti does NOT hit that note in this book.
In this book, Parenti focuses on CBS, NBC, ABC, the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. p. 2. These corporate media lie to us and manipulate us. p. 4; They cheer the enrichment of the rich, including their owners and advertisers, at everyone else's expense. p. 4.
Parenti cites dissenting publications: the Nation, the (New York) Guardian, CovertAction Information Bulletin, People's Weekly World, Z Magazine, the Progressive.
Media-monitoring publications: Lies of Our Times, Extra!, Propaganda Review. p. 4.
The World Wide Web began in 1991 at CERN. It was less than two years old when this book was published.
The poor are with us, we are told, but there is no explanation of the link between poverty and the increasing concentration of wealth, between poverty and regressive taxes, high rents, low wages, high profits, inflated prices, and underemployment. p. 9.
The failure of a market economy to respond to social need rather than private greed is seldom linked to anything in the nature of capitalism. p. 10.
Every year more than 14,000 workers in the United States are killed on the job; another 100,000 die prematurely, and 400,000 become seriously ill from work-related diseases. Many, if not most, of these deaths and injuries occur because greater consideration is given by management to profits and production than to occupational safety and environmental standards. Yet these crimes are rarely defined and reported as crimes in the news media. p. 10.
The press regularly ignores issues of desperate concern to working-class women and women of color. p. 13.
The press was uncritical of Reagan, while more than half of the public disapproved of the way he handled his presidency. p. 14. Daily newspapers endorse Republican presidential candidates over Democratic ones at about a six-to-one ratio. p. 14.
The media are strikingly successful in telling us what to think about. p. 23. There is nothing too essential and revealing that cannot be ignored by the American press, and nothing too trivial and superficial that cannot be accorded protracted play. The media set the limits on public discourse. p. 24.
Most newspeople lack contact with working-class people, have a low opinion of labor unions, and know very little about people outside their own social class. Right-wing think tanks flood journalists with propaganda. p. 44. Most reporters are probably not right-wingers but they do not have to be. Their owners are. p. 50. The ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class. The media are geared for ideological control. p. 60.
The Federal Communications Commission never applied its "fairness doctrine" to the political left. Leftist views never had a right to airtime. p. 66. Hundreds of newspeople are on the CIA payroll. pp. 67-69.
60%-80% of newspaper space and some 22% of TV time (more on radio) is advertising. Advertising is the goal. p. 70. One-third of corporate advertising is political and ideological. All advertising is tax-deductible. p. 74. TV weather people celebrate the effects of global warming. p. 81.
Thomas Ray
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