By Nathaniel Philbrick
Audiobook
Whale attacks ship!
Just another pre movie read. This movie is coming out soon so im listening to the book while at the gym. Love it so far.
"We are stoved"
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931
By Adam Toze
Library book
This book attempts to discuss the "new world order" that emerged as a result of tje end of WWI.
Pg. 12 Just after the war, power was measured by floating steel. The age of the Dreadnought was upon us.
Wow, couldn't really decipher the introduction so I'll go to chapter one and try my luck there.
Pg 165 on 16-17 July the Romanov's were all murdered andnthe real reign of terror by Lenin would begin. Meanwhile the US and Japan were about to invade Siberia. Most Germans at this time.knew that this was make.it.or breakit.for them if not already too late.
338 I didn'trealize that in 1919 there were race riots breaking out in the cities. "...entire African American neighborhoods were aflame...In Chicago the death toll reached 38...The whites targeted the symbols of wartime change -African American servicement and recent migrants to the northern cities." (See Wilkerson The Warmth of Other Suns for the complete story of the black diaspora).
An "upsurge in lynchings [was a symprom] of the most widespread outbreak of violence since the Civil War."(339)
The violence and esspeciallynthe lynchimgs would continue. In 1939 Billie Holiday would sing n about it in a song called "Strange Fruit" taken from a poem by Abel Meeropol first written in 1937. This is the.poem that the Tuskeegee Airman recites on the train ride in that fabulous movie about those "fighting men of the 99th."
355 The end of WwI saw an upsurge in radicalism and the.common man, squeezed to the wall, began to demand some consessions. There was much unrest worldwide and the forces of the property class acted decisively and oppresively. Tooze calls this the world-wide thermidore or the rstoration of order and normalcy as pr o mised by President Harding and ruthlessly carried out by men like Attorney General Mitchell Palmer.
This from the Columia University website on this topic:
GLOBAL THERMIDOR: THE RECESSION OF 1920-1921 AND THE MAKING OF THE INTERWAR ORDER
A talk by Adam Tooze
December 2
4:30-6:30 pm
Columbia University Faculty House (directions)
Abstract: The final stages of World War I and its aftermath, the period 1917-1923 witnessed a high-water mark both of revolutionary activism and of imperialist ambition. Europe, the United States, the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent, East Asia all witnessed unprecedented upheaval. And yet this “great disorder” was contained. Great power war was brought to an end and revolution pacified. The British Empire weathered its first great storm of the twentieth century. There are contending explanations for this worldwide “thermidor.” One can locate them in the relative weakness and strength of particular revolutionary movements or imperial projects. One can point to the violence of repression and the tactical mistakes of the insurgents. Existing social structures proved resilient in the face of attempts to upend them, both from the left and the right. But what such explanations fail to capture is the sheer generality of this experience of disorder and reordering. Following the argument of my recent book The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931 (Viking, 2014), this paper argues that we are missing one key ingredient that constituted this global conjuncture: the switchback of inflation and deflation that rocked the world economy between 1914 and the mid-1920s. The hyperinflations of the postwar period are the stuff of historical cliché. But what has been vastly underrated is the significance of the global deflationary shock of 1920-1921, which set the terms of the thermidor across the world.
Adam Tooze is the Barton M. Biggs Professor of History at Yale University. As of the summer of 2015, he will be joining the history department of Columbia University. Tooze teaches all areas of modern German History, twentieth-century economic history, social theory and the philosophy of history. His first book, Statistics and the German State 1900-1945: the Making of Modern Economic Knowledge (Cambridge, 2001), explored the connection between the emergence of modern national economic statistics and the crisis of the German state in the first half of the twentieth century and was awarded the H-Soz-Kult Prize for Modern History and the Leverhulme prize. His next book, Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (Penguin, 2006), provides a novel account of the Third Reich viewed from the perspective of the regime’s efforts to harness the German economy for its bid for continental hegemony. It won both the Longman and Wolfson prizes. Before he joined Yale, he taught for 13 years in the History Faculty of the University of Cambridge.
Pretty impressive reume Professor Tooze.
Dryer than Texas sand. Really a struggle this one. Not sure it was worth it.
Books:
Dreadnought
The Economic Consequences Of The Peace: Premium Edition
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
By Laura Hillenbrand
Ebook
What a story. Not my usual type of book really but since I'm going to the movie I though I would read it.
Friday, December 26, 2014
The Quantum Moment: How Planck, Bohr, Einstein, and Heisenberg Taught Us to Love Uncertainty
By Robert Crease
63 so Mr Bohr's "quantum leap" became a pop phrase and in thenprocess it's meaning was changed. When we say "quantum leap" we mean a huge step forward in space and technology. When in reality a quantum leap is quite small. So the nexxt time I hear that something is a quantum leap forward I will think "really that small huh".
Update: pg 69 If the scale.were the same the space traveled by the electron would be equivalent to own trip to the sun. So it ereally is a huge leap after all albeit in a tiny place.
Books:
In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality
Erwin Schrodinger and the Quantum Revolution
Music and the Making of Modern Science
Seeing Double: Shared Identities in Physics, Philosophy, and Literature
Essays:
How You Get That Story: Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and the Literature of the Vietnam War
Article first published online: 4 OCT 2005
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5931.2005.00177.x
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Landslide: LBJ and Ronald Reagan at the Dawn of a New America
By Jonathan Darman
Library book
This book is going to be good. Its the 1000 days from the Kennedy assassination to the 1966 midterm elections. In that time the cou try had seemingly abandoned The Democrats, Johnson and his Gdeat Society. The mid terms are a disaster for the Democrats as the republicans begin to appreciate and harness the backlash. This backlash politics would see many new republican governors elected as well, includinv the other star of this book Ronald Reagan.
Pg. 7 The autbor says bere that the news networks had full run of the TV the weekend of the Kennedy assassination. This was new to them and they tried hard to fill the time. The eventually had to just keep playing the same footage repeating the same facts over and over. Hence the CNN model was borne.
Pg. 13 He earner the derisive term "Landslide Lyndon" by beating Coke Stevenson bh 87 votes for the 1948 Senate race. Of course later, he has a legitimate landslide against Goldwater in 64.
Pg. 108 The backlash made alot democrats into republicans yes but it was the move to the suburbs that was the political whirlwind. The more people vot ojt of the city, the more attitudez changed about what was needed to fix them.
Pg. 116 And even though Johnson ' s warns him in a memo of the posible revolt of white middle class ("see to the men with the lunch pails") Johnson ignore him and speeds out furfher to the extreme. Those with lunch pails would not forget their abandonment. This is the very people, like my own parents, who would make up the force of fhe backlash.
Johnson promised Utopia and yet nite after night on the news our Utopian cities would burn. My parents watched this in alarm. Hippies and rioters and people protesting everywhere. I can just hear them thinking oh no this will not do.
Eh was ok I guess. Slipped at the end a little.
Books:
Robert Caro The Four book "Years of Lyndon Johnson" series
Mchael Harrington The Other America
Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America
Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan
A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House
The definitive account of the assination:
The Death of a President: November 20-November 25, 1963
Essays:
Our Invisible Poor - The New Yorker
By Dwight Macdonald
This above is his answer the Galbraith s The Affluent Society.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America
By Linda Tirado
Audiobook
Finished this one at the gym this morning. Good book and it's always great when the author reads their own work, especially in this case. Ms Tirado is an exuberant and energetic speaker and im sure will have no problem doing the circuit.
This is a topic that not many feel comfortable discussing. Nobody wants to be poor or associate with the poor but blaming the poor is always in season. I love the quote from Steinbeck that she uses. Basically he sayIs that socialism would never catch on here because there are no poor people--just millionaires and those on the way to becoming millionaires. Still holds true today. I have friends, one disaster away from welfare themselves, defend the rich and deride the poor.
It's a great system if your rich. It keeps the majority fighting with each other and leaving you alone. It works everytime.
Im no socialist but uh...Hey rich dude! When is enough going to be enough for you? Maybe ya could let up a little and give someone else a chance?
This book was written but just a plain old person like the rest of us. Its part of that leveling that the last technological innovation was to bring about. I hope.we see more like this.
Sunday, December 14, 2014
The Return of George Washington: 1783-1789
By Edward J. Larson
Library book
So, I just finished Ratification a decent if not sleepy tome on the Constitution. And in conjunction with that, and coming out at a similar time is this book by Larson. It picks up where the Revolution ends, and tells a version of the story of America's very early days. I frequently enjoy time traveling to this era. I find that alot of what transpires today in polktics and government is explained here at the source.
5 Washington returns his commission to Congress and this scene is later immortalized by John Trumbull a student of Benjamin West, in a painting that currently hangs in the Capitol's Rotunda. I encourage you to view paintings from this era and with these themes--very enlightening and refreshing.
62 Washington becomes president of a company that tries to open navigation on the Potomac River. If becomes and entangled mess between Virginia and Maryland and Pennsylvania. The trials and tribulations experienced by this endeavor are what spark the calling of the Annapolis Convention to regulate interstate commerce. This of course leads to the Constitutional Convention and history.
I watched The Crossing last night which is a dramarazation of the crossing of the Delaware and subsequent attack on the Hessians at Trenton. George Washinvton was a bad ass! In the movie he speaks to the defeatist attitude of his generals by simply saying "as long as I command so much as aa corporal's guard I shall endeavor." Wow!
Pg 184 And now we are at the part of the story which is ratification. Honorable mention here of Maier's book on this subject which I just finished prior to this. An exhausting tome, but we got through it.
Books:
Douglas Southhall Freeman's Six Volume classic
James Thomas Flexner's four volume work
Chernow Washington A Life
Jack Rakove Original Meaning
This book Washington helped finance
Travels Through North and South Carolina
http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/bartram/menu.html
Paul Finkelman
An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity
Monday, December 8, 2014
Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics
By Terry Golway
Ebook
Love this so far.
The failire of the potato crop brought Irish immigrants to America by the thousands.
There were several schemes afoot to blame the "unworthy poor" for their disasterous plight. I especially like this,"A new publication called The Economist insisted that government interference in the distribution of food would only transfer resources “from the more meritorious to the less.” Fox News wasn't born yet but this sounds just like them.
14% "Dagger" John Huhhes and the Tammany men were more than happy to round up the starving newly arrived Irish masses and help turn them into a voting block.
Golway calls it an "Irish Diapsora" This from Wiki' "The diaspora to America was immortalised in the words of many songs including the famous Irish ballad, "The Green Fields of America":
- So pack up your sea-stores, consider no longer,
- Ten dollars a week is not very bad pay,
- With no taxes or tithes to devour up your wages,
- When you're on the green fields of Americay.
- The Irish changed everything in America by sheer force of numbers alone. They felt that they were deliberately starved by Queen Victoria whom the refered to as the "Famine Queen"
- In the 1850's the Irish and their Mayor Fernando Wood dominated. This was the era of the gang like the Dead Rabbitts who battled others in NYC's notorious Five Points district. Nativists like the Know Nothings were ever present as well.
- None could see that the coming years wo7ld see change like none before in NYC.
- 21.8%
Books:
How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe (The Hinges of History) by Thomas Cahill
Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon
By Kim Zetter
Audiobook
Very interesting. Keeps me attention at the gym. I'm fascinated by this topic anyway so that helps too but very interesting.
Stuxnet was a worm released by The US with an assist from Israel sent to disable the centrifuges in the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, Iran.
The bug was captured in the wild and through subtle clues was traced back to the source - Us. So the first shots fired in the international cyber war were fired by the USA.
I guess it's a little more subtle that the Israeli's at Osirak. Sadam was out there like fargin' Maroney saying "I'm gonna know down the wall, and this wall, and that fargin' wall over there." And then therebwas nothing but a hole in the ground. "You fargin' a sneeky bastages."
So yeah, i guess it was better than bombjng them.
I just wonder hownthey got the bugnto cross the air gap. Someone had to load it on the machine in person. I wonder how they pulled that off. Maybe they'll yet say in the book. I'm still in the beginning.
Finished this this morning at the gym. Very interesting book to say the least. I have to look into this "zero day" bug issue a little more. I love the quote from one of the US security officials that said it is a though we, who live in a glass house have just thrown a stone. It may come back to bite us. I mean we have certainly surrendered the moral high ground here with this attack. Many woes can become us when our digital infastructure is attacked.
Certainly alot to think about.
Motown: Music, Money, Sex, and Power
By Gerald Posner
Ebook
This book was incredible. I have read several books about the recording industry in general that always sort of just touched on the subject of Motown and just moved on. So i really had no full idea of the impact of the label on music as a whole and my life specifically.
I grew up with Motown. I watched the Jackson 5ive cartoon on Saturday mornings. And when Michael came of age with in 1980 with Billie Jean, I was also coming of age listening to it in Germany away from home for the first time.
From the Temptations, whose Vh1 story of was awesome by the way, to the Supremes even Marvin Gaye and Lil' Stevie Wonder , these artists and their songs were the soundtrack of my life.
This is a must read for all those who want to know the true story of just what went on in that little white house on West Grand Boulevard with the sign on it that said Hitsville U S A.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788
By Pauline Maier
Library book
Xi - People put more stock in the Federalist papers than they sometimes deserve. Maier reminds, "[the Papers] were too often read as if it were a dispassionate, objective analysis of the Constitution" and not what it really was, which was actually just a "Partisan statement written in the midst of a desperate fight in a critical state."
Xiii July 4, 1788 "Antifederalists burn the constituion,"which for them was a percectly patriotic act."
Xiii- Maier says "shorthand men" copied the highlights of the state conventions for publication. "The printed debates were never exact" and may I add probably tendentious and partisan. Today, in our media saturated world, we would have the actual footage from everyone participating in excruciating detail. It's up to us to yet determine which was better, synopsis or minutiae.
Xiv - "Antifederalist was a Federalist term" (And a term of opprobrium). Interesting point, the winner tells the story and uses his own labels and terms. Just ask any Indian about that theory.
Pg. 15 Amongnst all tbet troubles with the ineffectual Articles, the event that prompted action was Shay's Rebellion. Some say it wasn't really a crisis at all and the powers of government inherent withing the framework of the Articles were certainly up to the task of putting it down as witnessed. To others it was a fire bell in the night.
Washington was not even sure he should attend this Convention, whose purpose was to fix up the Articles, and not to make a whole new government. He worried that in attending, he would violate tbe Cincinnati. He had beat his sword into a plowshare and was more than happy to rest under his "vines and fig trees." But where was the honor? For Washington, above all else, wanted to do the honorable thing.
Pg.32 It is stated very clearly in the Constitution that "Congress alone could declare war." If we had only stuck to this we could have avoided alot of heartaches.
Congress would pass laws that were "necessary and proper" to running the government. This and "promoting the general welfare" would be used and abused by partisans arguing that their position was constirutional. It would givebthe lawmakers Carte Blanche!
Pg. 72 II'm amazed at tbe vituperatude of the populace toward simple criticism of the document that would later become the Constitution. It was sort of a mob or sheep mentality took over with the more vocal side who.favored ratification threatened violence to those who thought differently.
Soon the first "Cato" letters (most likely George Clinton) appeared in the New York Journal.These letters along with other reconstituted Romans, mark the appearance of the first organized resistance to ratification. These essays taken together make up what some call the Anti-Federalist papers and became the loyal opposition's written response.
The crisis of Shay's Rebellion and the fear of the loss of Kentucky to spain and Vermont to England was what was driving the hysteria. Its and age old method of insuring the wishes of the powers that be get passed even if it's not in the best interests of the governed. How do you get people to vote againsf tbeir own interests? You scare them by exacerbating the crises all out of porportion. Works everytime. "Centinel" (likely Pennsylvania supreme court justice George Bryan's son) says hey wait a minute here, there is no immediate crisis. Let us take our time and really go over this document and give itsome scrutiny becore voting.
It's the same reason people voted for the PATRIOT ACT without even reading it. Nothing but time separates politics and human nature.
James Wilsom comes out in support of the Constitution by saying that state constitutions should have a bill of rights because the state governments assume all power unless otherwise specified. Whereas the Federal Government will asume none unless specified, therefore a bill of rights is not necessary and may acutally be counterproductive. If he only knew to what extent the bounds of the Federal Goverment would be stretched he would have felt differently I think.
Pg. 93 Maier reminds us that the "Antifederalists contested the term and, above all, The implications of disloyalty it carried."One can oppose the government and still be loyal. Isnt tbat every American's right?
Pg 104 so in the end, the vocal minority won in Pennsylvania. The convention voted to ratify against some pretty stiff competition. In spite of the rush to be first to ratify, they lost that race to Delaware who voted to ratify with no opposition as did New Jersey. Georgia was next and again with no opposition. So by the end of 1787, four states had signed on to tbe scheme. Next the spotligbt would move.to Connecticut and Massachusetts whose conventions were slated to meet early in 1788.
Pg. 138 Connecticut goes off without a hitch, and unlike Pennsylvania the loosers "didn't go away mad." Now on to Massachusetts (which at this time includes Maine-and you know how they love to dicker) and to the land of Daniel Shays, the reason this whole Constitution thing got started in the first place. Got a feeling this one's gonna take some doing.
170 One of the things displeasing to the Massachusetts men was the lack of the word God in the preamble.
179 On discussing pay, Theodore Sedvwick stood up to defend the right of Congressmen to set tbeir own pay, in a sense pay themselves. Sedgwick naively says, "Congress would not give its members exorbitant salaries, (can you imagine?) because they are answerable to the people." Ha! If you only knew where that was going sir. Not only would they vote themselves "exorbitant" salaries, they would also get exorbitant pensions and healthcare that would gaurentee their safe retirement. Which in turn makes our esteemed Representative less likely to fix the medical and retireme t system of their so-callex bosses.
215 so with Massachusetts firmly in the ratify column (a hard won fight). It's on to Richmond! But first...
New Hampshire adjours without a vote
Pg. 225 Rhode Island says no!
Pg. 247 Maryland is in! Seven pillars!
252 South Carolina is in! Eight!
Buy the summer of 1788, eight states had voted to ratify, most with reservations. Most people wanted to see a "bill of rights" attached prior to giving their approval. In June it would finally be decided as Virginia and New Hampshire and New York would all meet that same month and by the end we would know if this thing they called a constitution would become the supreme law of the land.
Virginia would meet firat and if a yes vote could be achieved, then they would be the official 9th state and the one who would forever go down in history as the deciding state. On to Richmond!
312 While we were stuck in the Richmond Statehouse listening to Patrick Henry drone on and on and on and on and on.... New Hampshire beat us to the punch. Intead of Virgina, the Old Dominion being the deciding ninth state New Hampshire would.go down in history as the decider. Virginia votes to ratify, but like many other states before her wants a Billof Rights inserted prior to ratification. Now the federal facade has ten pillars and more than enogh to pass. The events that proceed seem anticlimactic. But the fact that it played out just a few miles from my childhood home provokes my interest. On to Poughkeepsie!
Pg 360 In the midst of the raging debate in Poughkeepsie, news arrives the Delaware has rsatified bringing the total to nine and making the whole point of further debate moot. Yet amazingly the debate continued.
Pg 390 Word arrives that Virginia has also ratified really making furhter discussion superfluous. Yes lile true politicians they ignore the obvious and continue to bloviate.
400 New York is in! 11 staes now have ratified.
Pg 435 North Carolina is in and the game is over 12 states ratified. All in (as usual no one care about Rhode Island--Rhode who?
Done! I must say this book never really grabbed me. It had a few enjoyable moments but was mostly a chore.from start to finish. The information is important though so I stayed with it, but yikes!
Topics:
Shay's Rebellion
The Anti-Federalist papers
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
The Floor of Heaven: A True Tale of the Last Frontier and the Yukon Gold Rush
By Howard Blum
Ebook
This was ok. It was two stories in one or maybe three actually. It told the stories of Charles Siringo, George Carmack (whom, no offense to Johnny Horton, actually found the Bonanza gold), and Soapy Smith.
It gives a good flavor of the Gold Rush days and being in Alaska at that time.
Sunday, November 30, 2014
The Glass Cage: Automation and Us
By Nicolas CaGoogle talk gives a great description of the realir
Library book
So, I first read the shallows and bored my friends with all my talk about how computers are making us dumber. Then I read Clive Thompson and bored them about how computers are actually making us smarter. Now along comes Nicky with another book and again I have to re-evaluate my position.
I found it amazing that airline pilots who suddenly find themselves having to actually fly the plane when the autopilot malfunctions not really being able to for lack of actual flight experience. And the fact that although your GPS telss you to turn rivht and you see your road on the left you will still turn right totally ignoring the visual clues around you.
In every industry computers, for better or worse, are taking over. In my job they tell you treat the patient not the monitor. And after reading this book I now totally get what tbey mean. We have to be ablre to have a certain degree of skepticism when the visual clues don't mach what the monitor is saying. If nothing else just getting this point was worth the read.
The authors' Google talk gives a great description of the problems with implementation of EMR.
Pg. 189 Drones are good but the military is working in new technology called LAR that will pull the trigger itself based on its own programming and algorithms.
Topics:
Yerkes-Dodson performance curve.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerkes–Dodson_law
The flash crash
The dot com crash
EMR
Essay
GPS and the End of the Road Ari N. Sxhulman
Thenewatlantis.com
Bill Joy Why The Future Doesnt Need Us
Man Computer Symbiosis JCR Licklider
Video:
Watch the authors Google.talk and see what he really thinks about EMR.
Nicholas Carr, "The Glass Cage: Automation and Us": http://youtu.be/Mt8ooCms4sE
60 minutes "The March of the Machines"
Books:
Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution
Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age
Michael Hitzik
Flash Boys
Michael Lewis
Networks of Power
Thomas Hughes
To Save Everything Click Here
Evgeny Morozov
The End of Work
Jeremy Rifkin
Saturday, November 29, 2014
Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better by Thompson, Clive (2013)
By Clive Thompson
Ebook
So just when Nicky Carr had me convinced that the internet was making us dumber, along comes this book that takes up the opposing view. I think Mr Thompson actually has the right idea. I mean so what i look up things on google instead of agonizingly pulling them from the sub - conscious. Intelligence is knowing where to find the info we need. And now it's easier than ever to do.
Cowboys and Indies: The Epic History of the Record Industry
By Gareth Murphy.
Another interest of mine is the recording industry. I have read many books on the subject and this was a good addition to the knowledge base. It was like a peak into the whole business. All the time periods and trials and triumphs from each period were delineated wonderfully. Great bibliography. Got lots of leads.
What Stays in Vegas: The World of Personal Data—Lifeblood of Big Business—and the End of Privacy as We Know It
By Adam Tanner
Loved this book. Great look into what really happens when you put that magic card into the slot machine at the casino and how wether you are online or IRL, someone is always watching you.
I particularly like the program connect.me. This program gives you a visual representation of all the different entities that follow you as you surf the web. Try it youll be amazed.
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Our Oriental Heritage
By Will Durant
History of Chinese Writing with these words: "Were I to await
perfection, my book would never be finished."
That is advice to me.
"I want to know what were the steps by which men passed from
barbarism to civilization."
-VOLTAIRE.
CHAPTER I: The Conditions of Civilization
First, geological conditions. Civilization is an
interlude between ice ages:
Civilization begins in the
peasant's hut, but it comes to flower only in the towns.
Let us, before we die, gather up our heritage, and
offer it to our children.
CHAPTER II: The Economic Elements of Civilization
We must make sparing
use of such terms as "savage" and "barbarous" in referring to our
"contemporaneous ancestry." Preferably we shall call "primitive"
I. FROM HUNTING TO TILLAGE
There is a mute wisdom in this improvidence, as
in many "savage" ways. The moment man begins to take thought of the
morrow he passes out of the Garden of Eden into the vale of anxiety;
the pale cast of worry settles down upon him, greed is sharpened,
property begins, and the good cheer of the "thoughtless" native
disappears. The American Negro is making this transition today.
We shall never discover when men first noted the function of the seed,
and turned collecting into sowing; such beginnings are the mysteries
of history, about which we may believe and guess, but cannot know.
Slowly it became apparent that agriculture could provide a better and steadier
food supply than hunting. With that realization man took one of the
three steps that led from the beast to civilization- speech,
agriculture, and writing.
Cooking broke down the cellulose and starch of a thousand plants
indigestible in their raw state, and man turned more and more to
cereals and vegetables as his chief reliance. At the same time
cooking, by softening tough foods, reduced the need of chewing, and
began that decay of the teeth which is one of the insignia of civilization.
In Tahiti an old Polynesian chief explained his diet to Pierre
Loti: "The white man, when well roasted, tastes like a ripe banana."
The Fijians, however, complained that the flesh of the whites was
too salty and tough, and that a European sailor was hardly fit to eat;
a Polynesian tasted better.
When I have slain an enemy," explained a
Brazilian philosopher-chief, "it is surely better to eat him than to
let him waste.... The worst is not to be eaten, but to die; if I am
killed it is all the same whether my tribal enemy eats me or not. But
I could not think of any game that would taste better than he
would.... You whites are really too dainty."
It anticipated Dean Swift's plan for the utilization of superfluous children, and
it gave the old an opportunity to die usefully.
We must respect one another's delusions.
II. THE FOUNDATIONS OF INDUSTRY
Fire-Primitive Tools-Weaving and pottery-Building
and transport-Trade and finance
-
If man began with speech, and civilization with agriculture,
industry began with fire. Man did not invent it; probably nature
produced the marvel for him
Then, perhaps (for most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice), he imitated the
tools and industry of the animal:
Above all, he made himself a stick. It was a modest invention, but its
uses were so varied that man always looked upon it as a symbol of
power and authority, from the wand of the fairies and the staff of the
shepherd to the rod of Moses or Aaron, the ivory cane of the Roman
consul, the lituus of the augurs, and the mace of the magistrate
or the king.
in all probability weaving was one of the earliest arts
of the human race.
Weaving lead to basketry
Akin to basketry, perhaps born of it, was the art of pottery. Clay
placed upon wickerwork to keep the latter from being burned, hardened
into a fireproof shell
Only three further developments were needed for primitive man to
create all the essentials of economic civilization: the mechanisms
of transport, the processes of trade, and the medium of exchange.
a people may be enabled, by the development of specific
talents, or by its proximity to needed materials, to produce certain
articles more cheaply than its neighbors. Of such articles it makes
more than it consumes, and offers its surplus to other peoples in
exchange for their own; this is the origin of trade.
Our own words capital, chattel and cattle go back through the French to the Latin
capitale, meaning property: and this in turn derives from caput,
meaning head-i.e., of cattle.
III. ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION
Primitive communism-Causes of its disappearanceOrigins
of private property-Slavery-Classes
-
Trade was the great disturber of the primitive world, for until it
came, bringing money and profit in its wake, there was no property,
and therefore little government.
When Turner told a Samoan about the poor in London the "savage" asked in
astonishment: "How is it? No food? No friends? No house to live in?
Where did he grow? Are there no houses belonging to his
friends?" `010238 The hungry Indian had but to ask to receive; no
matter how small the supply was, food was given him if he needed it;
"no one can want food while there is corn anywhere in the
town."
What is extremely surprising," reports a missionary, "is to see
them treat one another with a gentleness and consideration which one
does not find among common people in the most civilized nations. This,
doubtless, arises from the fact that the words 'mine' and 'thine,'
which St. Chrysostom says extinguish in our hearts the fire of charity
and kindle that of greed, are unknown to these savages."
Why did this primitive communism disappear as men rose to what we,
with some partiality, call civilization? Sumner believed that
communism proved unbiological, a handicap in the struggle for
existence; that it gave insufficient stimulus to inventiveness,
industry and thrift; and that the failure to reward the more able, and
punish the less able, made for a leveling of capacity which was
hostile to growth or to successful competition with other
groups.
The characteristic laziness of primitive peoples had its origin,
presumably, in this habit of slowly recuperating from the fatigue of
battle or the chase; it was not so much laziness as rest. To transform
this spasmodic activity into regular work two things were needed:
the routine of tillage, and the organization of labor.
The rise of agriculture and the inequality of men led to the employment of the
socially weak by the socially strong; not till then did it occur to
the victor in war that the only good prisoner is a live one.
Butchery and cannibalism lessened, slavery grew.
It was a great moral improvement when men ceased to kill or eat their
fellowmen, and merely made them slaves.
Inheritance added superior opportunity to superior
possessions, and stratified once homogeneous societies into a maze
of classes and castes. Rich and poor became disruptively conscious
of wealth and poverty; the class war began to run as a red thread
through all history;
CHAPTER III: The Political Elements of Civilization
I. THE ORIGINS OF GOVERNMENT
-
The unsocial instinct-Primitive anarchismThe
clan and the tribe-The king-War
-
MAN is not willingly a political animal. The human male associates
with his fellows less by desire than by habit, imitation, and the
compulsion of circumstance; he does not love society so much as he
fears solitude.
It is war that makes the chief, the king and the state, just as it
is these that make war.
Sunday, May 18, 2014
All The Presidents ' Bankers
Nomi Prins
052014
Lb book
4 Haaa heres a good one. He talks of bribing Senators and says "today its called campaign finance."
The book opens with the Federal rescue of the gamblers on Wall Steet. No not in 2008, a century eadlier in 1907 when the Federal Government handed over 38 million dollars to JP Morgan itrest free to invest as he saw fit. The gamblers were saved and the country was crushed. Meanwhile JP morgan got all the credit when in reality it was taxpayer largess that once again saved the day. Its good to see we haven't learned a thing in 100 years. It's still the same today they dance and we pay the fiddler.
23 Here's Jekyll Island, or more appropriately, Jackals' Island as it was taken over by the rich. And what better place to gather tovether all the country's r8ch men to create their futures on our backs. There was even reprezentation of old.money there. Paul Warburg was there crom Kuhn, Loeb speaking for the Rothschild interest in the "banking" scheme.
27 Woodrow Wilson vents his spleen at the corrupt and damndable bankers while secretly being financed by them all along. Our history is full of these occurrences.
34 "1913 was a busy year for leglislation." In February the 16th amendment passes which sets the stage for the other thing to come. With the income tax in place the US taxpayer would now foot the bill for the Wall Street gamblers when there bets didn't pay off. Later the Federal Reserve act passed and together these two acts would hand the country over to the elite. All the Wilson, funded by these people, would rail against them.
38 The public, as usual, is completely bamboozled. This bill that is supposed to reign in the money trusts actually give them unlimited power. And just to cement the deal, two of the plans originators are appointed to Federal Reserve banks. Strong gets NY and Warburg gets Washington. The banksds were very happy. The Federal Reserve: it ain't federal nd there ain't no reserve.
34 JP Morgan Jr's number two man Thomas Lamont buys the The Evening Post (isnt that Hamiltons' paper)
With which the banker elite will begin to sway public opinion.
Books:
Other People's Money And How The Bankers Use It
Louis D. Brandeis
The Robber Barons
Matthew Josephson
America's 60 Families
Ferdinand Lundberg
The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance
Ron Chernow
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Ron Chernow
Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country
William Greider
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
No more blogger posts
There will be no more blog posts until I get a web address. It seems impossible so I guess this is goodbye.
Bet The Farm
"The year 2008 witnessed the greatest wheat crop in human history. That year also witnessed the greatest number of starving people in history."
Monday, May 5, 2014
C - Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants hooked us Michael Moss
050514
Lib ebook
This book open at a convention where an industry insider tries to make the head of tbe biggest offenders try to see the light. Guys, do we want to keep poisonig children and causing untold suffering it manufacturing products that overly appeal to them? The answer is yes we do.
Today foods that are already noe that great for.you have more things added to them to make even less helpful than previously. New and improved mean more 9f the constituents that give the consumer what the corporations call "Bliss" and "mouthfeel".
Foods today are manufactured just like cars and probably just as nutritious. The science of what we love in our food taztes is big business and the food corps are studying up.
For example, in PET scans of people eating sugar the same parts of the pleasure center light up as those who are doing cocaine. Sugar is as physiologically addicting as cocaine but dont try to snort it.
Great book with alot of useful information
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
C - ♥ The Meat Racket Christopher Leonard
043014
Lib book
So the meat industry has considated to three main players. This is about that consolidation and it's consequences. This big "vertically integrated" farms are now self sufficient and completely disconnected from the towns in which they do business.
22 In a fully verically integrated company no money goes to the local economy. Evefything is paid and controlled through the corporation. Any leftover profits go to the shareholders. This is all except the most costly and risky part, the actual growing of the chicks. The farming of the chicken was considered not profitable be Tyson so that chore is outsourced. This is the one chance people have to make some kind of money from the behemoth in their backyards. Its not a great deal.
25 These new agribusiness conglomefates are thd new feudal lords of the midwest in a land were the serfs do the work and the corporation reaps the benefit.
28 For the Yarnell's of Walddon the routine was steady. Tysone delivered the chicks, the raised them and six weeks lafer Tyson came and picked up their full grown chickens. It wasn't getting anybody ri h but it paid the bills. That is until.the chicks sfarted to die out.
30 It was all luck of the draw with the baby chicks. If you did everything rigbt you still had to get "good chicks [and] good feed [to get a ] good.profit."
35 The chicken farmers hadn't seen a pay raise in twenty years anx when Tyson began picking the chicks up two weeks earlier and 2lbs lighter the farmers were no longer able to even pay their mortgages. But Tyson itself was doing just fine, very profitable.
46 Two mass die off of the chicks in a row cause the Yandells to loose their farm and tbeir vrip on middle class existence. Inside the plant "downward pressure caused many workefs to leave, replaced but a more pliant and heaped workforce with alot lower expectations. Outside the pressure brouvht immivfant chicken farmeds to replace those who lost out. Meanwhile Tyson was doing fine.
57 So this whe chicken leasing deal sprang from the old tenant farmer or sharecropper arrangement. And Tyson was ripe to try it out. This in the 40's.
In 1947 Tyson Feed and Hatchery was incorporated. Already Tyson had learned to consolidate abd integrate his business.
68 With John Tyson at the helm, his son Don would make the finincial moves tbat would propel the company to the next level. In the 1960's with the help of the Farm Credit Association he began helping small farmers get loans to build industrial sized chicken coops. "A new breex of indentured farmer was born."
73 In addition to running a smart closed loop business, Tyson exploited a loop hole in the tax laws that "basically let Tyson take an interest-free loan from taxpayers." Profitable, yet still deceitful and dishonest, Tyson was well on tbeir way to crooked coporate citizen.
80 Then, after recovering from tbe downturn of '61. Tyson Foods Inc went public.
83 Ok first order of business for the newly minted profitable public company, screw the employees. They used lawyers to change and bend rules of employment in their favor and to keep tbe damn unions out.
84 Next, they went after the chicken farmers. Anyone who said anything got cut off. And when theh had the audacity to try and organize, they all got cut off. The Feds steps in and using laws from the old "meat trust" days tried to get Tyson to play nice. Tyson answered with a countefsuit and continued to do whatever the hell it want to do.
87 Classic! Tyson bought up a business that sold smaller chickens. Tyson up the price and renamed them Cornish Game Hens and presented them as upscale. They sold. The middle class loved them.
88 And then...John and his wife are hit be a train? Are you kidding me? What? I wonder how Donnie boy managed that one. Wow.
95 And then, in 1980 the McDonalds McNugget was born and a new revenue stream had opened for Don.
104 Tyson comes to Waldron and buys up the local chicken outfit and immediately seeks to screw the contract chicken farmers.
106 The chicken tender would turn ojt to be Burger King's answef to the the chicken nugget. And lime with the nugget, Tyson devoted an entire plant in Gfeen Forrest Arkansas to supplying them.
They mention Wal-Mart here also from Akansas. What is it about Arkansas that produces such successful companies that want nothing more than to screw over everyone they come in contact with.
107 The amount of chicken consumed in America per capita continues to rise. Chicken is the new hamburger.
108 In 1994 Tyson bougbt out Cobb-Vantress. This company had a genetically engineered bird that grew faster and fatter than any otber. Only problem waz the quality of the meat suffered. The market decided that quality didn't matter as much as birds that "were produced cheaply, at high volume, and on schedule." Esoterical things like quality and taste mean nothing. Taste was bread out in the selection process and no one cared. Same reason you ant get a decent tomato today.
110 Don Tyson kept his nose to the vrindstone and built his company into a 2.5 billion dollar a year business. All the buyouts and considations would leave total.chicken production For the US market In the hands of just four companies.
This from farmaid.org
The Poultry Powerhouses
Today the average American consumes 84 pounds of chicken each year, making it the most popular meat in the U.S. Not only is that a hefty bit of poultry—it's also more than twice the amount of chicken we ate 40 years ago.
The Broiler Belt map - click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
Behind that growing appetite are some big changes in the poultry industry, where chicken products move from chick to chicken nugget. Since the 1950s, the number of chickens raised in the U.S. has skyrocketed by over 1,400 percent, while the number of poultry farmers has plummeted by 98 percent.
Today, the U.S. poultry industry is the most concentrated sector in our food system, not just in terms of the number of farms, but more importantly, with regar In fact, the top four poultry firms in the U.S.—Pilgrim's Pride, Tyson, Purdue, and Sanderson Farms—control almost 60% of the market. d to corporate powerhouses who rule the roost. That scenario is bad enough for family poultry growers, but economists believe that at the local level, markets are much more concentrated, with most growers having only one or two buyers to sell to.
113 When local growers gave up or were forced out Laotians arrived to try their hand at it. Laotians? Really?
116 The growers are pitted against each other in what they sardonically call the tournament. After each delivery they recieve their ranking complefe with "feed ratios" and when they alone stand in tbe rankings. The company holds all the stats, makes all the calculations, and holds all the cards. Reimbursement is tied to the rankings and can fluctuate wildy.
121 Here's the actual equation they use.
PAY = [AFC - c ¡ + .05].q¡ Let the games begin! Its a farmer's hunger games. Also it's a zero sum game. The first figure AFC is average weight cost of all the flocks in the tournament. Zefo sum!
122 Under the Tyson system, no matter how spectaculad a farmer does, half will always win and the othef half will always lose. It's really the percect screw job Tyson will always pay the same.for birds no matter what happens while the growefs silently try to bankrupt the others. It reall is a Hunger Games. This Bird is on fire!
160 The crop of new chicken farmers, who replaced the old chicken farmers are now also going out of business. The tournament system gaurentees that the newer, more costlier, and more up to date farms will come out on top and drive out the older farms. This replacement cycle should narmally.take 30 years. This systems see opefations fully outdated in less than ten. The money from the F S A gaurantees that there will be more funds for the next guy to finanace his was to the top of the heap but he will not sfay there. The cycle will continue again and those at the top will be knocked off their perch.
Locals call it being chickenized when you fall out of the competition.
And Now Don Tyson wants to take the whole darwinian chicken cycle and try it with hogs.
160 Don steps down and Johhny Tyson takes command. And he is going to run "his" company his way.
165 The 1996 Freedom to Farm act replacex subsidies with disaster pay. In a sense the taxpayer would cover any unforseen losses to the farmers.
166 "The law disbanded production controls." Now tbere was no limit to what couls be grown. And in the case of overabundance, the Feds would step in and cover losses. Consequently, the price of feed, "the biggest cost Tyson Foods had to pay to raise animals," became insanely cheap. This would be a boon to Tyson and meat producers in general.
171 "Big Beef" companies like IBP began to fighf back. The old nasy beef carcass was now delivered already cut up and boxed. The butcher was no longer necessary.
204 Currently the corporations like Tyson Foods, squezze the producer to famine and instead of passing that savings on to the consumer, it pockets it.
206 Co stant downward pressure of meat prices has thinned the competition and driven alot of companies out. Currently meat produ tion in the hands of four big players. Tyson Foods is one of them.
208 Tyson Foods, JBS Swift, Cargill and National Beef buy and sell 85 percent of the beef in America.
226 The use of the drug Zilmax nakes the cattle grow bigger but at the cost of quality in the beef. And it would be left for the corporations to decide which is more important. So far quantity is winning.
279 O Obama wins Iowa and the election in part by promising to help the farmers with these out of control food corporations. I'm not to sanguine.
So in the end DonTyson quietly passed away and Tyson foods will carry on. In studies it has been noted that communities who rely on Tyson Foods for their livelyhood don't do as well as others. But some in those towns still thank god for Tyson. The say if it weren't for the Tyson plant they would have anything.
Must rewatch Food Inc.
This from Food Inc: The typical contract grower goes in debt 500,000 to earn 18k a year. The companies ontrol everything.
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