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.

C - Russians: The People behind the Power Gregory Feifer

T042614

Lib book

This author promises to give a look of todays average Russian. He puts the spotlighf on Putins' Russia and what is happening today since tbe fall. Russia is undergoing vast and frightening changes. I  the aftermath of the fall,  the country was sold to seven men. Now inequality and corruption reign. We will take a walk  with our author as he details the long term results of all this on the common man in today's Russia.

14 We open at a decadently conspicuous opening of yet another new place for the "minigarchs" to go to. In a city with mass prfound poverty rich nightspots are doing a thriving business. Typical.

16 Moscow is home to the worlds' largest collection of millionaires and about 80 billionaires as well. Wow  apparently this new way agrees with at least a few Russians.

22  I guess wherever you go people are people. Their one percent is looting their country too just like ours is. 70 billion dollars a year is invested elsewhere. I wonder where all their money and ours goes to? I know wherever it's treated best.

23 The old stars of Russia working through Putin are seeking to reclaim some oc the wealth a resojrces that went in fire sales in tbe 90,s. Its a "redistribution of the wealth," from one group of elites to another. Its like Dice Clay when his girl tells him she dropped thirty pounds. He says," yeah, from your belly to your ass babe." Yukos Oil magnate and oh-oh (original oligarch) Khodorkovsky was Putins, first target.  "Success in taking back the better of Russia's oil industry" only spurred them on. Actions like this one send a clear message that no matter how big your business is, gou operate in Russia at the consent of the state. No one is safe. That is why today's minigarchs cospicuously spend less and hide their wealth better, so as not to draw unfavorable attention from Putin's faction in Moscow

30 Now with Yukos's assets firmly in hand, Putin begins to reach out for Lukoil's oilfields as well. Those in charge know that he who controls the oil flow controls those depending on it. Moscow has already shut gas off to the "Ukraine during a price dispute in 2006." This also holds true for Russia's western European neighbors.  Germany, relying on Russian supply, is far less likely to criticize. You dont chastise the country, who through its shell company Gazprom, is providing "more than 40% of your nation's natural gas.

32 The author claims it's like a new  cold war only with gas and oil.

34 Top oligarch Berezovsky speaking of his group the seven oligarchs says "Now we have the right to occupy government posts and enjoy the fruits of our victory." Hence his puppet Vladamir Putin appears on the scene seemingly out of nowhere.

36 Get this. THe man who said that above quickly had a falli g out with Putin and lect to live in exile. Even this didn't save him, he soon committed suicide abroad and most of his holdings wound up in state hands under Putin.  It's dangerous to be on Oligarch in Russia and deadly to criticize Putin.

37 Berezovsky had originally gone to Putin with a scheme "of creating two political parties like in America." And like America, the top one percent would control both outcomes. It would give an appearance of choice, while the overriding agenda would  continue no matter which side won. Sound familiar? But he was too late in asking. By then Volodya  ( lil' Vladdy) was all grown up and didnt need to deal anymore.

40 Jeffery Sachs  and the world bank people were present at the fire sale advising Yeltsin. The biggest fraud ever committed in any country was about to begin.

52  Meanwhile outside of Moscow the future is bleak and the population is shrinking. Despair and gloom ade the only things being manufactured in the suburbs. Industry itself is dying out.

A recent study shows that rich Russian's doubled their incomes in the last 20yrs while the rest (80%) just got poorer. Now where have I heard this before?

59 Life after the fall was so bad that Russians' wefe remembering life under communism as the good old days. Todays poor in Russia will starve themselves to carry an Iphone. There is a priority derangement in progress.

66 In Kachatka the Salmon are being poached to extinction for the caviar. And the bears who feed on the Salmon are now seeking other sources of food (and I dont mean picnic baskets) I mean the two-legged kind. For the poor resident's it's fish or die, but it's unsustainable.

76 Siberia is melting.  10 thousand year old tundra is thawing so fast that you can see the water rise. No global warming there though.

84 When the going gets tough the tough start drinking especially if you're Russian.

87 Dmitri Mendeleev, yes that Dmitri Mendeleev,  also had a hand in standardizing Russian Vodka as well as the periodic table.

89 "Russia's already legendary alchohol consumption has tripled since the collapse of Communism." They also smoke more than anyone else. When reminded of the health hazzards associated with that lifestyle they remain unconcerned.  They are like "yeah whaddaya gonna do?" It happens. Now thats beat down. I thought we had it bad.

042714
This morning in tbe NYT. Lil Vladdy apparently is sittin on a pile. They estimate he's stolen some 70billion. He's getting almost as despicable as a wall streetb banker. Good job Vladdy. You go boy. Also South Park episode 1613 at the end they have frree pussy riot tee shirts.

120 The mass oppression of the Stalanist era and the the depravation of the Khrushchev era solidified  common Russians. They were united against the common enemy and they stuck together and stuck up for.each other. Today, one of the changes seen and felt is the breaking up of these bonds. Today is more odlf a western "everyman for himself and wi ner take all" feel.

121 The common man wanders around Russia today aimless with very little sense of community and the past and alsmost no belief in the future past oil. "The American writer Ri hard Laurie calls it Zombie Russia."

133 Sex is far less repressed in Russia than otber places. The natural sexual instinct is readily followed. The American Exposition in 1959 brought American goods to display to the Russians. In one such display house-of-the-future was where the Kitchen Debate between Nixon and Khrushchev.

138 "Permissive attitudes towards sex ended with the fall of Communism, when, paradoxically, it was suddenly everywhere. "

144 Russian attitudes toward roles.for women and toward same sex relationships remain stoneage. After announcing her divorce from Putin, a Russians joked that Luidmilla was the only Russian to ever liberate herself from Putin.

146 Abuse of women by their husbands or partners is rampant. It is estimated that one woman per hour dies in  this way, far more than western societies.

153 Being flush with oil and gas wealth is certainly no panecea. The resojrce curse is in action here demonstrated be the fact that "life in the 'worker's paradise' has barely improved in the last two decades." And quality of work is nonexistent.  "Russia now produces no manufactured goods that can compete in the world market."

154 The people.who do well today in Russia "are almsot exclusively those who steal state property, company shares, and money. And don't forget the biggest most lucrative theft of all, state resources.

160 After the costs of theft and corruption are added, the price for one kilometer of paved road in Moscow comes to 570 million dollars.

169  According the the author, Edward Keenan's Moskovite Political Folkways  "is one of the most seminal articles about Russian history." So far,  I have been unable to find this but I will keep looking.

171 Putin paints himself as the hero who snatched order again from the choas filled 90's. And with a Russian tradition of "concern that tbe government be right rather than legitimate" goes a long way. Basically,  as poles confirmed, "Russians still believed order to be more imlorfant than democracy." Putin exploits this tendency richly.

180 Wesfern fairy tales value persistence while eastern/Russian tales champion stoicism anx being resigned to fate. It is what it is. Eh whaddaya  gonna do. I think that's where all that great comedy and being able to laugh at tbeir situation comes from.

184 The author states that "the average Russian student now ranks close to the American student and neither  country should be proud of that."

185 True to form, the added  ost of corruption made the So hi Olympic Games the most costly in history. Huge sums were pocketed but lil Vladdy and his chums.

190 We visit Star "Star City" and pay tribute to tbe father of the Russian space program Sergei Korolev. This is man referred to as the "architect" in The Right Stuff.

191 October 4 1957 Sputnik! After the collapse, most of them lost their jobs.

203 The Bolshoi, left unfunded also collapsed. Fine art is holding on thanks to all the rich people who clustered in Moscow. Literature takes a hit as easy acess to other types of western media "threatens to turn a country of readers into viewers. "

214 Opposition to Putin's return is growing everywhere in Russsia. Pussy Riot and other prtest groups are proliferating. 60% of Russians are alreadh online creating a vast reservoir the protest movement can draw on.

217 Those In charge got the message that the internet was facilitating rebellion. "The year 2012 marked a turning point for authorities. " The leaders now see the internet as the enemy and are moving to shut it down or at least dampen its allure.

Inspite of all you heard about the internet as the great equalizer. In Russia its seen as another tool for control.  This is the premise of Morozov"s book.

219 Russians are not really inclined to fight back right now. A recent poll shows that "more than 70%" would refuse to stand up for the rights or protest "falling living standards." I fear we are becoming a nation similar.

229 A bedraggled survivor of the gulag archipelago says the failure of calling the Communists to task for what was done to them during the Stalin generation still affects them today. The extreme injustice "has a perpetuation and catastrophic effect on the Russian psyche.

232 You can judge a society level of civilization by seeing how it treats it's prisoners wrote Dostoevsky. Russians score low on this scale.

233 Its a veritable prison economy in Russia and still they don't lock up as many people as we do. We're numbed one!! USA !USA!

265 Putin's new ruling elite is referred to as "Politburo 2.0."

268 So as Yeltsin is faltering a series of explosions start in Russia.  Putin, who some say engineered the whole thing,  blames it on the Chechnyas and uses that as a pretex for war. False flag operations like this run throughout history.

In tbe classic stamp of false flag ops, debris from the explosions was quickly carted away before any real investigation could begin. Classic! They get away with it everytime because we let them. And when caught red handed trying to bomb a building the FSB said the whole thinv was actually a drill. Don't worry, just a drill. Wow amazing how the playbook never changes. Anyone who attempted to prove it was acutally the FSB (ie Putin) who was responsible for the Russian apartment bombings wound up in jail or dead. Yep works everytime, everywhere.

274 "Don't carry garbage out of the hut." (Old Soviet adage)

287 "lawsuits have replaced the contract killings of the 1990's as a more humane way to get rid of competitors." Russia explores a new/old tactic.

302 The author is expressing here how the "mass-murdering" leaders of old are being reworked into sort tbe stewards oc the golden age. "Wbile no one can devine the future, Russia is the only country with an unpredictable past." (Old Russian saying)

311 As early as 1835 De Toqueville alreaxy had the future all mapped out. He new it would come down to Russia and America as the leaders of the new world that would one day dominate. Pretty stellar predi tion I"d say. One would be through freedom and tbe other through servitude but "each seems marked out by heaven to sway half the globe."

I too thought it was a sad day when Russia went down. I miss our old predictable enemy. There were rules we lived by in our warfare and hatred of each other. Russians never would have crashed planes into buildings, way to passe'. Way too low class

312  Although Putin seemed to want to join in our "so called" War On Terror, it was really just an excuse to go after the Chechnyens. Its now business as usual. Putin even ocfered Snowden political asylum to embarrass America. Then after commiting  some of the most egregious human rights violations since his hero Stalin, he gets on the stage as a Russian pot calling the American kettle black.  And of course it works, it always works. Putin even went so far as to denounce his his "soul mate" W. And acted Bush said such sweet and loving things about you lil Vladdy.

314 They ( the Russians) hate our guts and we pay them through USAID 50 million dollars a year. So when they say Americans are assholes, someone corrects with yes but assholes with money. Dont you just love our largess.

316 The tide turned to backlash after the NATO bombing of Serbia. They did not like that one bit, still dont.

334 When the price of oil crashex to a dollar a Barrell in 1986 Russia who was dependi g on oil revenue to keep the system going, also collapsed. The catalyst was oil. And even today, more than ever, Russia continues to be buoyed up by oil.

Books:

To Save Everything Click Here Evgeny Morozov.
Journey Into The Whirlwind by Yevgenia Ginzburg (remains one of the best accounts of life in the Gulag.)

Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues Martin J. Blaser

Lib book

042514

Wow this is really interesting.  The author proposes that alot of the diseases that efcect modern mna today can be traced to disruptions is what he calls the "human microbiome"

First teaser: younge age antibiotics tend to favor obesity and it may relate to the abscence of H. Pylori.

16 The author stresses that the majority of biomass, and hence, life on the planet is micrbial and they live anywhere and off anything. Get this they found microbes that live off the plastic floating in the ocean. They just appeared. The author calls it "natural (plastic) selection in action." Microbes to the rescue!. Maybe thats how we will survive. Maybe as we destroy things new microbes will step in and fix the damage.

18 And of course we have also harnessed them like work horses while we, virus like, force their factories to produce various substances for humans for fun and profit. It's nature's ultimate nanotechnology.

25 We literally house a "microbial zoo" on and in our bodies.

37 Diversity is key. The more microbes that inhabit tbe human microbiome the better, even the 30-40% whose purpose we have yet to indentify. The author calls these "contingency microbes" they are the what ifs of the micro world. And what if one of them protects us from some future plague? Better to keep them around.

46 In the early years, when were separated into small bands of hunter gatherers,  epidemics were rare. The didnt exist the population to propagate them. Pathogens  used techniques like latency to live long and prosper. Diseases like Tuberculosis and Herpes Zoster were big among early man. Only later would we start to see the "so-called crowd diseases" like the measles which flourishes in large populations.
  
60 Penicillin the wonder drug that ushers in the golden age of medicine.
(But that what makes ya can also beak ya thats what Mr Rythm say)

*******
A germ so infectious it kicked Koch right in his postulates. :-)
Best thing for infectious disease since Dr Snow took the handle of the braodstreet pump.
Its better for you than Mr Flemings  left over sandwiches.  Or maybe just his leftovers.

69 The antibodies created in some strep infections cause Rheumatic fever. Even alot of Dr's don't realize you give the antibiotics to prevent the latter not too treat the former.

*******

Books

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
David Quammen

The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance
Laurie Garrett

Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical
Anthony Bourdain

C - The Snowden files : the inside story of the world's most wanted man Harding, Luke,

Lib book

042414

This looks like it's going to be interesting. Like Manning and Ellsberg before him, whistle blowers in society tend to take the brunt of the bad news. No one wants to hear the plain truth about things and there are those who will go to extreme measures to keep them secret. But every now and then some brave souls stands up and tells all.

Books

The Spycatcher by Petef Wright
The Codebreakers By David Khan
The Shadow Factory: The NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America
James Bamford

Fosse by Sam Wasson

042214

Lib ebook

This book opens with Fosses` wake. Then moves on to the early Vaudville/burlesque days.

Chicago worlds fair Sally Rand The Fan Dance

3% And the dancing in the Navy in the late 40's.

4% Rogers and Hammersteins Oklohoma was the first time music and action on stage were fully coordinated. "Seems obvious today...but by 1943 it happened only piecemeal.  A little in Showboat. A little more in Pal Joey." But in shows like Oklahoma and Carousel the music and the story were integrated.

In the early days he hung out with Buddy Hackett and Carl Reiner

5% Fossie marries Niles july 1947

6% Joan Mckracken convinces him to become a choreographer.

9% Fosses' then wife now Joan Mckuracken (Mary Anne Niles was history) gets him his first shot at choreographing a big broadway production-The Pajama Game.

The Steam-Heat number in the Pajama Game was all Fosse. It was a formal introduction to the future of Broadway dance.

10% Then came the movie My Sister Elieen and Fosse Choreographed and starred in  a number with Tommy Rall called the Alley Dance. Two guys figbting it out with dance? Nothing funnier than that. I cant wat h this without laughing it's just so ridiculous.

Then in March 1955, the Pajama Game takes the Tony for best musical and for best choreograghed dance with Steam Heat. Fosse was on his way.

The on to Damn Yankees where he meets and dances with Gwen Verdon for the first time.

The bowler hat was all about  covering his bald spot.

11% After the gorilla number was cut from Damn Yankees, "who's Got The Pain was substituted. This is probably the quickly put together inanane pie e ever foisted on an unsuspecting public. Its so horrible it's literally laughable. Like most broadway lyrics, no thought at all went into the composition but this one even goes lower with bird caws and such. Horrible.

Shortly after that the song A Little Brains A Little Talent was added.

12% Then in September 1957,  "a new benchmark." Jerome Robbins West Side Story changes Broadway once again.

15% With successes under his belt like "The Redhead" Fosse newly married to Gwen Verdon, tries to kick his drug habit. Seconal he gives up cold turkey and has a seizure from withdrawals.  But instead he increases his amphetamine usage with the typical law of diminishing returns.

16% October 15 1961, I was 6mos old, How to Succeed in Business opens to rave reviews.

He says Fosse can be somewhat Dicktatorial at time prancing around like a leotard clad tyrant. I cant help picturing Dom Delouise in history of the world doing the French mistake. "Wrong! Watch me faggots" I know the whole stereotype of the fairy dancer is in reality the opposite as you really have to be in shape to do it well. But its just so stupid! Dont get me wrong I love Fosse and I am enjoying reading about him but I really dont think I'll ever get it. But im trying to.

20%  Big Spender is Fosse, from his show called Sweet Charity. Did not know that

21% Also in this show If My Friends Could See Me Now.

23% Wow he bombed with his directorial debut for the movie version of Sweet Charity.

Inspite of his flop, Fosse convinces Marty Wolfe at Allied Artists to let him direct Cabaret. And the rest is as they say, history.

25% Fosse was quite the man of affairs. Love affairs that is. When the cinematogrpher asked one of the producers on Cabaret is he thougbt Bobby (Fosse) was gay. He replied if he is he's sure hiding it well. This as they wat hed him fall in love again with a woman that was not his wif Gwen Verdon. Horndog!

The Billionaire's Apprentice: The Rise of The Indian-American Elite and The Fall of The Galleon Hedge Fund Anita Raghavan

Lib book

042014

2 "In one generation Indian-Americans had vaulted from geeky outsiders to polished players in all facets of American society."

3 Like we  learned in Gladwell's Outliers, the time period you are born into has vast consequences over your eventual fate. In the case, our hero, Rajat Gupta was born to the generation of the "twice blessed." That is to be born after Indian independence Aug 1947 and to be able to take advantage of Americas new immigration laws for Indians. Mr Gupta was in that wave of children that hit at just the right time.

19 Like America,  and at about the same time period, India had a greatest generation. They would have had to be to accomplish all they did.

C-George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution

041514

Lib ebook

by Brian Kilmeade  Don Yaeger

So far of the secret six the only one I know is James Rivington.

We open with the stunning defeat and retreat at New York. Its only in close reading that one recognizes the extreme peril that Washington faced in the Revolution.

We begin with the hanging of Nathan Hale. "I regret that I have but one life...." Now thats devotion. Apparently there is a plaque commerating the spot were Lt. Hale was hung in Manhattan.

13% Ok this John Honeyman had a part to play in the Trenton New Jersey operation. Honeyman went to Col Rall and told of how he sawthe bedraggled and dispirited colonials and that there would be no way for them to advance.  The Col bought it and set the stage for the surprise of the early war.

14% Major Benjamin Tallmadge is to be the head od the new spy ring being put together by Washington. And the first one talked about is Abraham Woodhull.

21% Austin Roe and Caleb Brewster join the club.

22% They were to be known as the "Culper Ring" from Woodhull's alias Sam Culper.

23 % Invisible ink makes its appearance.  They would put a subtle F Or A somwhere on the paper to tell wether to expose the letter to fire or acid to reveal its secrets.

26% Robert Townsend joins the group.

31% Here we meet James Rivington. Publishing a partial newpaper for the King also doubling as a spy for the colonials.

Rivington's print shop and coffeehouse was the Barnes and Noble of the day. Also in attendance there was Maj John Andre'.

32% And we add a lady to the mix the infamous #355

48% Arnold begins planning to turn over West Point to the British.

52% Sep 1780 John Andre" goes forth to meet Arnold and plan the surrender. It is important to mention that Arnold may have been planning to surrender Washington with tbe fort if he was there. But the author reminds that Arnold was just in it for the money he really wasn't unpatriotic enough to care either way about Washington.

55% Dick move Arnold! Benny tricks his barge men Into rowing him out to the HMS Vulture under a flag of truce. Instead of bidding them a fond farewell he has them get on the sbip and tells them they are now prisoners.  Thats so Arnold.

58% Washington proposes a swap. You want Andre' back ok. Give me Arnold. They should have. But of course they would not. And a man of quality and character goes to the gallows in place of the cur that should have went.

59% Andre' requests death by firing squad as befitting an officer and a gentleman. Denied! Due to the fact that the British hanged Nathan Hale, Andre' would aslo be. He was buried in Tappan NY under the gallows for.forty years.  Then  the body was sent back to Englad and reinterred with honors.

End comments:
Interesting story of the secret spy ring of the Revolution. The only one who dissappeared waz the female agent 355. They never did find out what happened to her. The rest went on to live out their daus peacefully in a land that tbey helped.do bring about with their spying.

C - Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

Fredrik Logevall
Ebook
041414

Ho Chi Min did everything he could do to ensure his country"s independence. He appealed to Wilson after WWI And Truman after WWII all to no avail. Inspite of our tendency against colonoialism we would not help him acheive independency. He turned to the communists and thats when out benign neglect turned to all out hostility.

12.9% Truman blew it. He lime some many others at the time had his eye on Russia and what the picture was going to be post war. And inspite of Ho Chi Min using parts of our Declaration of Independence, The Truman team goes with France and the old colonial model. This decision would have grave consequences for all involved down the road.

13.5% Lovely description here of Saigon the "Paris of the east" circa 1900's. It describes the Rue Catinat with the big Continental hotel at one end and the other the Majestic.

14.1% first American death in Viet Nam: 1945

"Peter Dewey was the first of nearly sixty thousand Americans to be killed in Vietnam. His body was never found, and the French and Viet Minh accused each other of being responsible for the murder. Washington reacted to the killing by scaling back the OSS presence and activities in Saigon. Before he left for the airport on that final day, Dewey had summarized his thinking in a report: “Cochinchina is burning, the French and British are finished here, and we [the United States] ought to clear out of Southeast Asia.”54.

15.8% “I prefer to sniff French shit for five years than eat Chinese shit for the rest of my life.”
Ho chi min on the deal that lead to Vietnamese recognition.

19.1%  " Whatever date one chooses for the start of the First Vietnam War—September 1945, with the outbreak of fighting in Cochin China, or November–December 1946, with the conflagration in Tonkin—by the start of 1947 there was fighting throughout Vietnam."

24.7% America decides to get involved.

The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made with a new int
Walter Isaacson, Evan Thomas

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department
Dean acheson

The Truman Doctrine was an international relations policy set forth by the U.S. President Harry Truman in a speech[1] on March 12, 1947, which stated that the U.S. would support Greece and Turkey with economic and military aid to prevent them from falling into the Soviet sphere.[2] Historians often consider it as the start of the Cold War, and the start of the containment policy to stop Soviet expansion.[3] Truman pledged the US to contain in Europe and elsewhere and impelled the US to support any nation with both military and economic aid if its stability was threatened by communism or the Soviet Union. The Truman Doctrine became the foundation of the president's foreign policy and placed the U.S. in the role of global policeman. As Foner reminds us, the Truman Doctrine "set a precedent for American assistance to anticommunist regimes throughout the world, no matter how undemocratic, and for the creation of a set of global military alliances directed against the Soviet Union" (1st edition, p. 781; 2nd edition, p. 844)

This Truman Doctrine becomes the law of the land.

24.8% So keep in mind now that this Ho Chi Min had done everything he could to convince the western powers to let his country be free. Only after all those options were exhausred did he flirt with the communists. And to the US this was unforgivable.

24.9 " Charles Reed, the former consul general in Saigon who had penned the “dead-end alley” memo in January and who continued in the spring to voice deep pessimism regarding the prospects in Indochina."

25%  " Newsweek concluded that Ho might be “more of a Vietnamese nationalist right now than a Communist stooge,” but Acheson wasn’t buying."

34.2% " IN LATER YEARS, GREENE WOULD INSIST THAT HE HAD GOOD REASON to believe that the CIA was involved in the actual January 9 bomb attacks. Wasn’t it a little too convenient, he asked in his memoirs, that Life happened to have a photographer right there on the scene? “The Life photographer at the moment of the explosion was so well placed that he was able to take an astonishing and horrifying photograph which showed the body of a trishaw driver still upright after his legs had been blown off. This photograph was reproduced in an American propaganda magazine published in Manila over the caption ‘The work of Ho Chi Minh,’

Intresting....

44.7% With troops.already at battle stations in Dien Ben Phu, The superpowers sit down to.a conference on world affairs.
" Regarding superpower relations, Eisenhower generated nervous smiles from the Europeans with his graphic description of the new, post-Stalin Soviet Union. Russia, he declared, was “a woman of the streets, and whether her dress was new, or just the old one patched, it was certainly the same whore underneath.” America intended to drive her off her present “beat” into the back streets."
Holy  shit Ike said that? I guess we really hated the Russians.

45.5% Monday morning quarterbacks wonder in the realm of what if history. What if Navarre had called retreat in Dien Bien Phu?
"As a U.S. undersecretary of state would say years later, in arguing vainly against making Vietnam a large-scale American war: “No great captain has ever been blamed for a successful tactical withdrawal.” A more clueless and incorrect statement has never been ordered, preposterous! Everyone blames a retreater.

47.9% " Late in the month the Smith committee recommended, and Eisenhower approved, the dispatch of two hundred uniformed U.S. Air Force mechanics to Indochina to service American-supplied aircraft, including the new B-26s, on the understanding that “they would be used at bases where they would be secure from capture and would not be exposed to combat.” The president also agreed to send U.S. civilian pilots hired by the CIA, using planes from the agency’s proprietary airline, the Civilian Air Transport (CAT), to assist the French with air transport." This Jan 54 the first bonified American boots on the ground and this before Diem Bien Phu.

49.5% March 1954 operation "fukyu frenchie" (the attack on Dien Bien Phu begins.

50% "
Colonel Piroth fell into extreme despair. “I’m completely dishonored,” he muttered to a fellow officer. “I have guaranteed de Castries that the enemy artillery couldn’t touch us—but now we’re going to lose the battle.”58 Perhaps too he remembered his dismissive assertion to Marc Jacquet on January 26: “I have more guns than I need.” Sometime that morning of March 15, Piroth slipped away to his dugout. Being one-armed, he could not charge his pistol. He lay down on his cot, pulled the pin from a grenade with his teeth, and clutched it to his chest. De Castries initially tried to keep the circumstances of the death secret,"

66% Viet Nam is split at the 17th parallel. 

Books

Giap: The General Who Defeated America in Vietnam
James A. Warren

Advice and Support: The Early Years, 1941-1960 (United States Army in Vietnam)
Ronald H. Spector

The Quiet American Graham Green
The Ugly American William J Lederer
Deliver Us From Evil Tom Dooley

C-The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap

Matt Taibbi

041414

Lib book

Wow this guy is really making the rounds. Hes been on Bill Maher and The Daily show.

So Matt looks at the income gap from the perspective of who goes to jail. Those who have money escape prosecution even for the most egregious of financial crimes. While  for those on the other side on the other side of the divide its very easy to wind up in jail. Insanely easy. In general, crime is down everywhere yet we continue lock up more people than ever, poor people that is.

44 Taibbi details all of the blatant and arrogant crimes of the sub prime club and the only one prosecuted was a black gang member and the victims were the banks. Everyone else went scott free. This is the two tiered justice system that has come to inhabit our country.  Tough prosecutions for the common folks and white gloves VIP treatment for the rich and well connected.

Read Suskind's Confidence Men

48 In the midst of a white collar crime wave the doctrine of Collateral Consequenses was ensuring that none of them were prosecuted. Everyone except a few politically unconnected slobs like Abacus.

63 HSBC money laundering on a grand scale? It's ok no problem

64 LIBOR? Alright you crazy bankers knock that off or I'll give you a nuggi.

Time and fime again the top law enforcement people kow towed to the rich offenders.

PBS Frontline documentary The Untouchables

145 A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers. Good book.

379  The nations biggest banks have borrowed 16 trillion dollars from the fed at zero or near
zero intrest. This is why we now get .025 interest on  our savings accounts. They no longer need our money. They can get all they want for free from the Fed.

407 Matt Taibbi fun fact. After the financial crime of 2008 congress authorized 9.8 million to go after the criminals. Since none went to jail, it must have been spent on hookers and booze. Anyway that same year the DEA budget was 15.278 billion. Now you tell me who we are really going after.

Astoria, or, anecdotes of an enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains

041414

Washington Irving

Gutenberg ebook

So being as its free, even on Amazon, I thought I would look into this book even though Irving has never been accused of being bothered by the facts in his reporting.

Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival

041414

By Peter Stark

Lib book

And now the world of John  Jacob Astor. I first delved into this world in Fur Fortune and Empire bu Dolin. I love this time period in American History. It was a time when fortunes were created from the exploitation of the environment. It still goes on today. We drain the planet fof the betterment of the few. Although Astor is credited with the whole enterprise he is actually just the man who funded it. Those who really created it all remain unsung. Hopefully in this book we will get some of their story as well.

108 Much like Sacagewea, the overland group had a squaw with them that went be the name Marie Dorion. And the author muses about those two meeting each other and what would have been said. Interesting.

110 one thing everyone agreed on, avoid the Blackfeet. It appears they had it our for white men since Lewis and Clark had killed one of tbeir own.

125 In the wekk of June 12, 1811 both parties met in the Arikara villages gathering supplies for the trek up the Missouri.  Sacagewea was with her husband Toussant Charbonneau in the Manuel Lisa party. While in Hunt's oveland party was Marie Dorion with two small children and now pregnant.

Check that date. A war was about to break out.

132 the naming of the grand Tetons. A frenchman called them the great tits. And the name stuck.

146 Several canoes were lost on the run down the Mad river some of them laden with goods. In 1938 one of them was found with goods still intact. Awesome!

Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality Manjit Kuma

041114

Lib book

We open up with the discovery of the Quantum whe figuring out the black body radiation question.

103 Bohr begins to realize that durning a quantum leap the electron must instantaneously dissappear from one orbit and reappear at the next. There is no Intermediate state.

117 Bohr meets Einstein.  Not impressed with all this quantum business,  Einstein "abandoned the quantum" in the quest for the theory of everything.

120 "one day the great European war will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans." Otto Von Bismark.
Einstein,  quite the dick to his wife by the way, returns to Germany as war descends on Europe.

I guess im still not ready for this book yet. Lost in the sauce. Sent it back. Willtry again at another time.

C-♥Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt Michael Lewis

040214

Im starting this book in Barnes and Noble (yes for free - yes im a dirt bag). I just had to dive in after seeing this author on the news talking about this book and specifically about his appearance on 60 minutes.

Unlike a his books about wall street in the past which seemed to sort of glamorize the traders, this one exposes them lol. Apparently the big Wall.Street brokerages and banks play dirty and have an unfair advantage.  Who'd a thought?

So new computer trading is allowing for all kinds of before unheard of moments for arbitrage. The book opens up with the secret cable laid fron  Chicago to  New Jersey to facilitate this practice.

25 really? Canada locked up the Japanese too in WWII?

26 The Canadian bank RBC has a "no asshole rule". If Wall Street had that, tbere would be none left to hire.

35 This Canadian trader discovers  that every time he tries to initiate a big trade, the market seems to move  just ahead of him as though the market can anticipate his next move. He smells a rat.

I didnt know that the exchanges went private. When the heck did that happen? Now there ard 13 or so public exchanges. Just wbat America needs. (And 44 private ones?)

35 Now that people have been eliminated from most stock transactions.  Our hero finds out that the whole system is just a black box with "matching software" and that instead of selling stocks the firms now sold  "algorithms designed by the banks" in a procedure "dubbed electronic trading or "HFT High-frequency trading.'" The fact that people are eliminated can now cause all kinds of brand new anomalies introduced into the system. Already there have been several "flash-crash" incidents reported. In the absence of proper regulation, they wall streeters are free to do whatever they think will make them money even if it means the destruction of the "golden goose."

They come up with a computer program called Thor which helps to sheild intentions from the system with computer code. It works. Using Thor allows them to once again take control of their own transactions at least.

40 He realizes that unlike the recent past, the image he saw on his screen was just a matrix-like illusion and not the actual picture of the market activity. So that when he actually hit the buy button most of the stocks that he was looking to buy just dissappeared. It was as though the market was "moving away from him." Behind the scenes a computer was taking note of what you wanted to buy and In a millisecond less than you, it was buying the stock ahead of you to sell it back to you.

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Ok just a side note Starbucks in Barnes and Noble is out of coffee. Is that even possible? Wow.

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45 This is rich. This Brad  Kaysuyama is going to put a team togetber and catch the Wall Street banks red-handed at fixing the game. Did you roll out of your chair too laughing? Guess what Brad everyone knows they do illegal things everyday. They rig the market and rob the planet and make sure at the same to do it conspicuously.  They damned near crashed the planet with their cutthroat dishonest bullshit and nonboby cared. So good luck with that Brad.

52 Brad realizes that there is about 160million dollars  day being siphoned off tbe system.  Who was getting that money was anybody's guess.

So this scam is called the front-run. A trader acting a few milliseconds ahead of you sees your request to buy a certain stock he purchases it ahead of you and then sells it back to you on anotber exchange with a small amount added of course.

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Holy shit!!' Dr Tighe said Hi. It truly is another  spring miracle.

And heres Amanda with children in tow. Its old home week (I really dont even know what that means).

No Tony though im surprised.

Just a quiet afternoon at B&N on this beautiful spring day.

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56 Chapter Three Ronan's Problem

So, all out smackdown bitchslap debate on CNBC. BATS head Bill O'brien confronts Brad Katsuyama on national television and Katsuyama comes off as a little inept but O'brien comes off as an overly-defensive blowhard. It seems Mr O'brien takes offense to the accusations hurled at him. The funny thing is the stock market has been rigged since day one. It has always been this way. This is really nothing new. Lewis, in a different interview  dares to suggest the reality that the markets have always been rigged in favor of tbe insiders and that this is really just another episode long running series. The only thing that surprises me about this is the fact that people are surprised. Are we really that naive to believe that those people on the inside are insuring fairness for the rest? Really? Wow.

23.2% "Wall Street was once again a place." Computers had taken the "place" factor out of transactions. I mean everything happens in less than a second right? Doesn't matter where you are in the world. But now we were starting to talk milliseconds and just like that place, really proximity,  mattered once again.

25.7% He helped them obtain the cat bird's seat; the coveted Toys R Us cage. This cage that used to host the servers for the toy company was the closest server in line to the server that held the matching software. Talk about proximity! Ronan wanted to name his new company proximity because that's really what he was selling.

In a nutshell:

“What he said told me that we needed to care about microseconds and nanoseconds,” said Brad. The U.S. stock market was now a class system, rooted in speed, of haves and have-nots. The haves paid for nanoseconds; the have-nots had no idea that a nanosecond had value. The haves enjoyed a perfect view of the market; the have-nots never saw the market at all."

The have nots never saw the real markets at all!

27.1 % When Ronan laid out the fiber optic maps of the area it all became obvious.
This is why BATS was the most accurate:

"To Brad the maps explained, among other things, why the market on BATS had proved so accurate. The reason they were always able to buy or sell 100 percent of the shares listed on BATS was that BATS was always the first stock market to receive their orders. News of their buying and selling hadn’t had time to spread throughout the marketplace. “I was like, ‘Holy shit, BATS is just closest to us.’ It’s right outside the freaking tunnel.”

Wow here's the whole scam:

"Inside BATS, high-frequency trading firms were waiting for news that they could use to trade on the other exchanges. They obtained that news by placing very small bids and offers, typically for 100 shares, for every listed stock. Having gleaned that there was a buyer or seller of Company X’s shares, they would race ahead to the other exchanges and buy or sell accordingly. (The race they needed to win was not a race against the ordinary investor, who had no clue what was happening to him, but against other high-speed traders.) The orders resting on BATS were typically just the 100-share minimum required for an order to be at the front of any price queue, as their only purpose was to tease information out of investors. The HFT firms posted these tiny orders on BATS—orders to buy or sell 100 shares of basically every stock traded in the U.S. market—not because they actually wanted to buy and sell the stocks but because they wanted to find out what investors wanted to buy and sell before they did it. BATS, unsurprisingly, had been created by high-frequency traders."

29.7 So RBC  percects Thor and begins to shop it around remaiing constantly astounded at the fact the fact that these so called sophisticated investors had no idea what was happening. Even David Einhorn did not know. (this is what the CNBC schlock couldn't believe).

And then, the inevitable;  2:45 pm on May 6, 2010 came the first flash crash.  If you blinked you would have missed it. The screens returned to normal in just a few seconds, but the possibilty of what could happen was now a reality.

"Then came the so-called flash crash. At 2:45 on May 6, 2010, for no obvious reason, the market fell six hundred points in a few minutes. A few minutes later, like a drunk trying to pretend he hadn’t just knocked over the fishbowl and killed the pet goldfish, it bounced right back up to where it was before. If you weren’t watching closely you could have missed the entire event—unless, of course, you had placed orders in the market to buy or sell certain stocks. Shares of Procter & Gamble, for instance, traded as low as a penny and as high as $100,000. Twenty thousand different trades happened at stock prices more than 60 percent removed from the prices of those stocks just moments before. Five months later, the SEC published a report blaming the entire fiasco on a single large sell order, of stock market futures contracts, mistakenly placed on an exchange in Chicago by an obscure Kansas City mutual fund."

30.7% Bank of America employee John Scwall tells us that the "assholes from Merrill Lynch" who should have beenthrown out the door actually paid themselves big fat bonuses just before being bought out by Bank of America.

77.4% So after Ronan's team created the ultimate safe exchange they assumed many would join them in the practice of clarity and transparency. How many joined? "
None. Zero. There are now forty-five markets. On forty-four of them no one has any idea how they trade. Has it not dawned on anyone that it might actually be a good idea to tell people how the market works? People can look back on the financial crisis and say, ‘How can you give a mortgage loan with no documentation? It’s preposterous.’ But banks did it. And now trillions of dollars of trades are being executed on markets where no one has any idea of how it works, because there is no documentation. Does that sound familiar?”

So this new entity called a flash crash is a new and frightening reality of todays srock market.

85.4% "The same system that once gave us subprime mortgage collateralized debt obligations no investor could possibly truly understand now gave us stock market trades that occurred at fractions of a penny at unsafe speeds using order types that no investor could possibly truly understand."

88.2% so which big Wall Street bank will be the first to embrace a new "fair" system? "Goldman Sachs was insisting that the U.S. stock market needed to change, and that IEX was the place to change it. If Goldman Sachs was willing to acknowledge to investors that this new market was the best chance for fairness and stability, the other banks would be pressured to follow."

95.4% " The members of the Women’s Adventure Club had been told by a local government official that the fiber-optic line was a government project to provide high-speed Internet access to local colleges. Hearing that it was actually a private project to provide a 3-millisecond edge to high-frequency traders, they had some new questions about it. “How does a private line get access to a public right-of-way?” asked one. “I’m really curious to know that.”

Good question.

So in the end the microwave tower trumps the fiber optic cable. Whats next? Its Men Who Stare At Goats. Remote visual imaging will be the next maybe. Whatever it is, it will benefit the few and penalize the many. Is it illegal? Is it unethical? Is it immoral? I used to think that just to avoid the sleaze was enough. I thought that they could keep the corrupt shit and have at it as it made no difference to me either way. Boy was I mistaken. They can take all of us down with them as they almost did in 2008 which we are still trying to recover from. So yes, someone does have to round them up after all, but good luck with that.