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1250276578
| 9781250276575
| 1250276578
| 4.31
| 340
| Jul 11, 2023
| Jul 11, 2023
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it was amazing
| On Sunday February 18, [1945] the lieutenant in charge of Navy press at the On Sunday February 18, [1945] the lieutenant in charge of Navy press at the-------------------------------------- …good intentions have rarely paved such a direct route to hell.Back in World War II there was a small bit of graffiti that appeared in many places across the world. It showed a nose, the fingers of two hands and eyes peeking over a wall, or a fence, along with the words “Kilroy was here.” It was meant to show that American soldiers had been in a particular place, and that they had been everywhere. If Dickey Chapelle had wanted to, she could have left her graffiti across the world as well, not just to show that she had been there, but that she had been the first woman, the first reporter, the first woman reporter who had done the job in many, many dangerous places. She slept in Bedouin tents in the Algerian desert, and in the foxholes she dug herself in the hills overlooking Beirut. She rode in picket boats between battleships off the coast of Iwo Jima and flew in a nuclear-armed jet stationed on an aircraft carrier in the Aegean sea. On New Year’s Eve 1958, she patrolled the Soviet border with the Turkish infantry. On New Year’s Day 1959, she photographed Fidel Castro’s army as they entered Havana. She jumped out of planes over America, the Dominican Republic, South Korea, Laos, and Vietnam. She heard bullets flying over her head in Asia, North America, Europe, and Africa, and knew that they all sounded the same.[image] Engraving of Kilroy on the National World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. - image and descriptive text from Wikipedia It is likely you have heard of Margaret Bourke-White, famed for her coverage of World War II. You may have heard of Marguerite Higgins, noted for reporting on the Korean War. It is very unlikely you have heard of the subject of this book. Go on Wikipedia, or most other places that aggregate such information, and look up World War II correspondents. Chapelle, whose full name was Georgette Louise Marie Meyer Chapelle, is unlikely to appear. Yet, she did seminal work covering diverse elements of the war, including battles on the front lines. She even trained as a paratrooper, so she could jump into battle zones with American military units, which she did. Lorissa Rinehart seeks to correct that oversight. [image] Lorissa Rinehart - Image from Macmillan She tracks Dickey from her brief stint as a student of aeronautical engineering at MIT. Soon after, she was a journalist in Florida, covering a tragic air show in Cuba. It was her first real reporting “at the front” of a deadly event. And the way ahead was set. When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, she saw that war was coming with United States. Although Congress did not agree to declare war, it did ramp up production of airplanes and other war materials to support the effort against Nazism. [image] Dickey Chapelle - Image from Narratively, courtesy of Wisconsin Historical Society She learned that she would have to become a photographer if she wanted to cover the war. So she took photography classes. Among her teachers was the man she would marry, Anthony “Tony” Chapelle. Their relationship was never a natural. He was much older, controlling, with a temper, described by some as a consummate con man. He would be jealous of her successes, and seemingly always eager to undermine her confidence. But he was a very successful war photographer and taught her the skills that would enhance her natural eye, helping make her the great photojournalist she would become. [image] Dickey Chapelle photographs marines in 1955 - image From Wall Street Journal – from Wisconsin Historical Society Rinehart tracks not only Chapelle’s adventures on the front lines of many military conflicts, but the skirmishes in which she was forced to engage to gain permission to be there at all. Sexism, as one would expect, forms a major portion of those struggles, but some had to do with her being a journalist at all, regardless of her gender. There is a string of firsts next to her name in the history of journalism, and the word “female” does not appear in all of them. Sadly, she was the first female correspondent killed in Viet Nam. [image] Chapelle with Pilots - image from the Wisconsin Historical Society Dickey was tough as nails, enduring some of the same training as the GIs she was covering. In addition to her considerable coverage of World War II, she was on the front lines of the major hot spots in the Cold War. Not only embedded with marines, Chapelle spent considerable time with troops from Turkey, Castro’s rebels in Cuba, anti-Castro plotters in Florida, secret American forces in Laos, Laotian anti-communist fighters, Algerian revolutionaries, Hungarian rebels, and more. The list is substantial. She would keep diving in, wanting to get the immediate experience of the fighters, the civilians caught in the crossfire, the human impact of war. No Five o’clock Follies for Dickey. She was not interested in being a stenographer for brass talking points, seeing that approach as the enemy of truthful reporting. [image] Dickey Chapelle sits and drinks coffee with the FLN Scorpion Battalion Rebels in the Atlas Mountains in Algeria - image and descriptive text from the Wisconsin Historical Society – shot by Dickey Chapelle Chapelle was captured, imprisoned, and tortured in Hungary by Soviet forces. It gave her a particularly pointed perspective on the treatment of prisoners by Western militaries, and the greater implications of the USA not holding to the highest international standards. One of her greatest gifts was a respect for local cultures and particularly local fighters. She was quite aware of how hard they trained, how hard and far they pushed themselves, how much deprivation they willingly endured. Yet she encountered attitudes from American officers and leaders that regarded non-white fighters through a self-defeating racist lens. Chapelle tried to get the message across to those in command how wrong they were in their regard for the locals the USA was supposedly there to support. Despite occasionally breaking through the brain-truth barrier, that engagement proved a demoralizing, losing battle. [image] Iwo Jima Medical Facilities - image from the Wisconsin Historical Society – shot by Dickey Chapelle Another example of her analytical capability was fed by her time with a community in Laos, led by a cleric, possessed of superior tactical and political approaches. She tried to bring her knowledge of this to American military leaders. It was not a total failure. Although her ideas were not implemented to a meaningful extent, she was eventually brought in by the military to teach what she knew to new officers. Through much of her work, which included extensive coverage of the on-the-ground Marshall Plan in Europe, her marriage to Tony was seemingly in constant crisis. It was an ongoing war, with dustups aplenty, advances and retreats, damage incurred, but resulted, ultimately, in a separation of forces, which freed Chapelle to pursue her front-line compulsion unimpeded by contrary wishes. [image] Fidel Castro with cigar, and five other men - image from the Wisconsin Historical Society – shot by Dickey Chapelle Her employers were not always news outlets. She was employed by the Red Cross to document the need for blood in the war zone. She covered a hospital ship, and medical units on the battlefield. It was hoped that her coverage would give a boost to a national blood drive encouraging Americans to give blood for wounded soldiers. It was a huge success. She worked for the American Friends Service Committee covering military behavior in the Dominican Republic. Other non-profits paid for her to report from other parts of the world. And sundry magazines provided enough employment to keep her working almost constantly. [image] A woman in a headscarf crosses an improvised bridge in the vicinity of the village of Tamsweg, escaping from Hungary to Austria - image from the Wisconsin Historical Society – shot by Dickey Chapelle This is an amazing book about an amazing woman.The story of Dickey Chapelle reads like fiction. Even though we know this is a biography, and that what is on the page has already occurred, Rinehart makes the story sing. Her story-telling skill brings us into the scenes of conflict, sometimes terror, so we tremble or gird along with her subject. She taps into the adventure of Dickey’s life, as well as the peril. This is the life that Dickey had sought, and which would be her undoing. The book reads like a novel, fast, exciting, eye-opening, frustrating, enraging, sad, but ultimately satisfying. Dickey Chapelle’s was a life that was as rich with stumbling blocks as it was with jobs well done, but ultimately it was a life well lived, offering concrete benefits to those who were exposed to her work, and an inspiration for many who have followed in her bootsteps. I side with prisoners against guards, enlisted men against officers, weakness against power. Review posted - 10/6/23 Publication date – 7/11/23 I received a copy of First to the Front from St. Martin’s Press in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review will soon be cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to Lorissa Rinehart’s personal, FB, and Instagram pages Profile - from Women Also Know History Lorissa Rinehart writes about art, war, and their points of intersection.Interviews -----Writers Talking – Season 2 Episode 7 - Talking to Lorissa Rinehart - podcast – 50:30 -----Hidden History Podcast - A Conversation with Lorissa Rinehart with John Rodriguez - video – 40:18 – begin at 1:43 – there is a transcript on the side -----Cold War Conversations - Dickey Chapelle – Trailblazing Female Cold War Journalist - audio – 1:01:50 Items of Interest from the author -----The War Horse - excerpt -----Facebook reel - Rinehart on Dickey Chapelle showing incredible guts -----FB - The Top 10 Books She Read to Prepare -----The History Reader - Escaping Algeria - excerpt -----Narratively - The Parachuting Female Photojournalist Who Dove Into War Headfirst Item of Interest -----Milwaukee PBS - Behind the Pearl Earrings: The Story of Dickey Chapelle, Combat Photojournalist - video documentary- 56:05 -----Political Dictionary - Five o’clock Follies ...more |
Notes are private!
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not set
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Sep 30, 2023
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Oct 03, 2023
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1250279003
| 9781250279002
| 1250279003
| 4.16
| 1,259
| May 12, 2022
| Jul 12, 2022
|
it was amazing
| There is only one way out of this. The only way out of this outcome is that the November midterms are the final referendum on whether America truly st There is only one way out of this. The only way out of this outcome is that the November midterms are the final referendum on whether America truly stays America and a democracy or if it becomes a fascist dictatorship. If the Democrats lose the House and the Senate, then it is all over. There may never be another free and fair election in America. If the Republicans take control, we may be teetering on the edge of an American dictatorship. - from The Guardian interview-------------------------------------- There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call "The Twilight Zone." - One of several introductions used for the showIt does not take a lot of imagination to see what is happening in America today. They are coming for you. They are coming for your voting rights, your right to have your vote counted, your right not to be gerrymandered into a Jackson-Pollock-designed district that renders your vote moot, your right to be able to vote without having to stand on line for hours, your right to vote without having armed men and women watching you, intimidating you, your right to vote by mail, by drop box, your right to have someone bring your ballot to the election board if you are unable to do it yourself. They are coming for your right to privacy. An extremist religious SCOTUS whose members lied when they swore they would uphold precedent, reversed that very precedent and removed your right to do what you need, what you want, with your own body, blithely leaving hungry state foxes in charge of the abortion hen-house. They are coming for your money. Trump could not seem to do much to improve infrastructure, get us out of Afghanistan, deal with global warming or COVID, or seriously address any real public policy issues, but he managed to pass a massive tax cut for the wealthy and corporations. One guess who is supposed to make up that lost revenue. They are coming for the safety net programs that vast numbers of Americans rely on, while raising taxes on the middle class, on the working class and the poor. By Election Day 2020, the Trump-dominated Republican Party solidified itself for what it perceived was a battle to change the soul of America permanently. Trump’s financial backers saw endless opportunity for tax cuts and limitless, tax-free profits. The stock market saw a president who would ruin nearly a century of regulation and allow them unimaginable capital gains that they could pass on to their children without paying taxes. The party investors saw a middle and lower class that would pay for virtually everything Republicans wanted and divest from virtually every social program liberals wanted. In their eyes, the average American would see none of the profits of America but literally pay for the wealth and prosperity of the richest of the rich. In fact, Trump and his lieutenants managed to do precisely that in his first four years. By the end of his administration, money allocated for education, childcare, and mental health would pay for mega yachts. In Trump’s America, executive jet purchases were tax free.They are coming for your right to remain alive. Republicans have fought every attempt to enact sane gun control, untouched by the daily slaughter from these weapons. They are apparently just not that into you. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of the rights and benefits that they want to take from you, from us. The right to marry, to love who you want, the right to define for yourself, and not allow the government to define your gender. Yes, they are coming for inter-racial marriage. They are coming for your right to use birth control. And they will not stop there. You have not just woken from a dream in an episode of The Twilight Zone (TZ). This is the terrifying reality of America today. Forget the reality you know, or thought you knew. You have been dragged, or maybe you ran into it. (Some superstitions, kept alive by the long night of ignorance, have their own special power. You'll hear of it through a jungle grapevine in a remote corner of the Twilight Zone. - from episode 3.12 - The Jungle) [image] Malcolm Nance - image from Macmillan Malcolm Nance is an intelligence professional, who has been dealing with foreign enemies for decades. What he has seen in analyzing terrorism and insurgencies abroad has given him a unique insight into what is now an ongoing domestic insurgency, an insurgency that is the means by which the fascist Republican right will take what it wants from you. They will try to win elections, and will win many, some fairly. But they will try to win by cheating, wherever playing fair will not get the job done. Once in office they will steal your rights, and legislate permanence to their position. What they cannot win at the ballot box, they will try to seize at the end of a gun. He calls this movement TITUS, for the Trump Insurgency in the United States. If you are among the remaining sane Republicans you might feel like the guy in TZ episode 1, who finds himself all alone in an abandoned town. [image] Earl Holliman as Mike Ferris in TZ episode 1, Where is Everybody - image from Do You Remember Nance presents a group-by-group look at the organizations involved in promoting and perpetuating chaos in our country, with the goal of seizing power. Many of these will be familiar. (Proud Boys, Three-Percenters, Oath Keepers Boogaloo Bois) Some were news to me. (e.g. Atomwaffen, the Base, Panzerfaust) He offers some history, showing how the bigotries of the past have persisted, albeit with some costume changes. He shows how the unspeakable monsters of the far right have gained increasing publicity from the right-wing media echo machine, and the main-stream media. And sadly, how the views expressed have found a home in a large portion of American households. He notes Trump’s rapid transition from distancing himself from the crazies to fully embracing them. No, this is not a Rod-Serling-generated fantasy land. The Proud Boys really are the khaki’d descendants of the skinheads. TITUS is a pre-rebellion political-paramilitary alliance that intends to use politics, instability, and violence to meet its goals. The number one goal is reestablishing the Trump dynasty as the primary operating system for America. Then they will use the power of the government to punish their enemies. The political wing of TITUS, the Trump-dominated Republican Party, has already initiated a dangerous plan to embrace the launch of protracted political warfare in America.Recent reports are that Trump even dreamed of having generals as loyal to him as Hitler’s were to Der Fuhrer, not realizing, because he is an ignoramus, that Hitler’s generals had tried to kill him on multiple occasions. It is pretty clear that this is not the only thing about Hitler that Trump envies. What we are looking at is a world in which there are people hoping to put Anthony Fremont into the Oval Office, again. You don’t remember Anthony? If you are a Twilight Zone fan you might. He was a monster, the star of one of TZ’s most famous, and chilling episodes. He was six years old, and lived in Peakesville, Ohio. Looks like a regular kid on the outside. But he was born with an unusual talent. He could make things vanish or rearrange them in horrible ways. He has already made all the world around Mar-a-Lago, sorry, Peakesville, disappear, and if you harbor any unhappy (UnMAGA?) thoughts he will do terrible things to you. The episode was called It’s a Good Life, taking its title from the ironic statement of an adult who knows it is anything but. Discussing the impeachment of President Trump on Meet the Press, Representative Jason Crow, a Democrat from Colorado, said most members of the GOP are “paralyzed with fear.” He continued: “I had a lot of conversations with my Republican colleagues. . . . A couple of them broke down in tears . . . saying that they are afraid for their lives if they vote for this impeachment.This is what TITUS wants. [image] Billy Mumy as Anthony Fremont in It’s a Good Life, TZ season 3, episode 8 - image from NY Post Nance goes through what he calls the Psychodynamics of Radicalization, pointing out characteristics that well describe many on the right. They all see themselves as victims, are emotionally reactive, internalize negative stimuli until they burst, embrace conspiracy theories, have flexible ideological identifications (meaning there is no there there, any excuse will do to back up whatever it is they want, or are being told to do.) It goes on, but offers a fair description of many of the TITUS horde. There is certainly a lot of thinking inside the bubble going on, which leaves them with reduced capacity to think critically about the propaganda they mass-consume from the likes of Fox and Breitbart. [image] TZ Season 1, episode 22, The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street - image from Noblemania – two aliens are amazed that simply by fiddling with a local electricity grid, they can cause the residents of this place to reveal their inner monsters and destroy each other One thing that I hoped would be addressed is the role Russia might have played, or is still playing in organizing or supporting some of these nut farms. Personally, I believe that Russia was instrumental in the creation of Q-Anon, but do not claim that to be a fact. It would be consistent with Russian cyber-war attacks against the West over the last few decades. There is a strong connection between Putin and disgraced former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who has been rumored to be “Q.” Nance might be in a position to have an actual informed opinion about who Q is. He does, however, offer a provocative scenario in which Q-Anon evolved from a live-action-role-playing game. An even more provocative scenario depicts a theoretical nation-wide assault on governments by the armed right. It is chilling. The violence of today’s right has been bubbling for a while. He reports on increasing white-nationalism in the police and military. The significance of this is that instead of bumbling amateurs trying to storm governors’ mansions, many of the assaulters will be combat trained, able to organize assaults, and comfortable using weapons. Military-style training camps have been increasing in number. Insurrectionist-oriented organizations joining together, or coordinating, can form a serious threat to the nation. Another huge threat is the propagation of lone-wolf terrorists, fooled by right-wing media lies into taking action against non-existent crimes. Remember Pizzagate? In its ability to inspire low-information followers to commit mortal acts of violence TITUS very much resembles ISIS. Violent extremists in the United States and terrorists in the Middle East have remarkably similar pathways to radicalization. Both are motivated by devotion to a charismatic leader, are successful at smashing political norms, and are promised a future racially homogeneous paradise. Modern American terrorists are much more akin to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) than they are to the old Ku Klux Klan. Though they take offense at that comparison, the similarities are quite remarkable. Most American extremists are not professional terrorists on par with their international counterparts. They lack operational proficiency and weapons. But they do not lack in ruthlessness, targets, or ideology. However, the overwhelming number of white nationalist extremists operate as lone wolves. Like McVeigh in the 1990s and others from the 1980s, they hope their acts will motivate the masses to follow in their footsteps.He also points out that the right has an advantage in camouflage. The January 6 insurrectionists were able to get as close as they did to the Capitol largely because they were white. Had a black mob of comparable size been breaking down barriers in DC that day, the response would have been very different. The whiteness of the assaulters allowed them to get close. Will that work in state capitols too, or again in DC? You will pick up some of the terminology used by the right, terms like accelerationism, ZOG, The Storm, zombies, sovereign citizen, constitutional sheriff, and plenty more. You will also learn about some of the books that inspire these folks. You may have heard of The Turner Diaries, but maybe not about The Great Replacement, by Renaud Camus, or Siege, by James Mason (no, not that one). They Want to Kill Americans is Malcolm Nance, with his hair on fire, trying to get everyone to see what is coming, pleading with us to take measures to forestall a bloody American insurgency. The book works in two ways, both as a warning of imminent peril, and as a resource. Use this book to learn who the relevant right-wing groups are, what they are about, who their leaders are, what their goals and methods are. There are many names named in this book. It would be good to learn as many of them as possible. Sadly, we are not in a dimension beyond time and space. We are in the dark place in which millions around the world find themselves facing hordes of fascists determined to destroy democracy as we have known it, substituting authoritarian rule. The threat is real, and unless we can fend it off we may never be able to find our way out of The Twilight of Democracy Zone. (with apologies to Anne Applebaum) …several Republican legislatures including in Florida, Oklahoma, and Missouri have made the murder of protesters by running them over in a vehicle legal. Review posted – August 12, 2022 Publication date – July 12, 2022 I received an eARE of They Want to Kill Americans from St. Martin’s Press in return for a fair review. Thanks, Sara Beth and Michelle, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. [image] [image] [image] [image] This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, FB, Instagram, and Twitter pages The focus on his personal site at present is Ukraine, where Nance is working with the government to fend off the Russian invaders. Interviews ----- The Mary Trump Show - Malcolm Nance & Mary Trump: They Want To Kill Americans - VIDEO – 41:21 -----Malcolm Nance: ”The Republican Party is an insurgent party” - By David Smith -----Salon - Malcolm Nance on the Trump insurgency: Jan. 6 was a "template to do it correctly next time" by Chauncey Devega ----- The Commonwealth Club - MALCOLM NANCE: BEHIND THE IDEOLOGY OF THE TRUMP INSURGENCY - video – with Pat Thurston - 1:16:52 My review of another book by the author -----2018 - The Plot to Destroy Democracy Item of Interest -----University of Ohio - Twilight Zone Introduction -----Flux - ‘Once we take control’: Far-right broadcaster lays out his Christian fascist agenda by KYLE MANTYLA ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Aug 06, 2022
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Aug 10, 2022
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Hardcover
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1640095209
| 9781640095205
| 1640095209
| 4.15
| 95
| Jul 05, 2022
| Jul 05, 2022
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really liked it
| In…Almeida-Sanchez v. United States in 1973, Justice Thurgood Marshall, an icon of the civil rights movement and the first Black man to serve on th In…Almeida-Sanchez v. United States in 1973, Justice Thurgood Marshall, an icon of the civil rights movement and the first Black man to serve on the Supreme Court, asked a series of questions that pressed the government’s lawyers about the true extent of the Border Patrol’s authority on American highways deep inside the United States. Unsatisfied with the response, Marshall finally asked if the Border Patrol could legally stop and search the vehicle of the president of the United States without any evidence or suspicion whatsoever. When the lawyer said “Yes,” Marshall concluded, “Nobody is protected.”-------------------------------------- The Border Patrol in their green uniforms, patrols between crossing points. Customs was renamed the Office of Field Operations, its agents, in blue uniforms, work at crossing points and in airports. Agents of a third unit of CBP, Air and Marine Operations (AMO), wear brown uniforms and manage the agency’s aircraft and ships. AMO’s authorization in the U.S. code differs from the Border Patrol in that it does not include any geographical limits, so they are able to operate anywhere in the country.So a few military-looking sorts in camo, with automatic weapons, rush up to you, grab you by both arms and stuff you into an unmarked van that speeds away. Only a general “Police” insignia on their uniforms, wearing shades at night, covering their faces, no explanation of why you are being abducted. Where are you? Russia? Turkey? The West Bank? How about Portland, Oregon, July 2020? What the hell was the Border Patrol doing in Portland anyway, at a demonstration protesting the police murder of George Floyd, an event having zero to do with immigration? In Nobody is Protected, Reece Jones explains how it has come to be that an agency created to protect the border, and to deal with immigration issues has seen its domain grow to the point where it can operate in most of the country, and take on missions having absolutely nothing to do with crossing a border. What makes them particularly dangerous is that they do not live by the laws that govern the rest of the police forces in the nation. Do they need probable cause to stop your vehicle? Not really. How about a warrant? A BP agent laughs. Can they use racial profiling for selecting who to stop? Of course. That a problem? Oh, and they are now, taken together in their three parts, adding in ICE, the largest police force in the nation. Sleep tight. [image] Reece Jones - image from Counterpoint – photo by Silvay Jones Jones looks at the history of border patrol efforts prior to the establishment of BP in 1924. He tracks the changes in the characteristics of the BP over time, while noting some of the traits that have not changed at all. The Texas Rangers of the early 20th century figure large in this, complete with reports of Ranger atrocities and their considerable representation in the Border Patrol once it was set up. As Mexico outlawed slavery long before the USA, one of the things the Rangers did was intercept American slaves trying to flee the country. The mentality persisted into the BP force, along with those Rangers. Jones offers reminders that the charge of the patrol was often racist, reflecting national legislation that sought to exclude non-white immigrants, with particular focus on Mexicans and Chinese. Exceptions were made, of course, to accommodate Texan farmers during the seasons when labor was needed. A guest worker program was established to compensate for many American men being away during World War II. Willard Kelly, the Border Patrol chief at the time, told a Presidential Commission in 1950 that “Service officers were instructed to defer apprehensions of Mexicans employed on Texas farms where to remove them would likely result in the loss of crops.” Instead, they would focus on the period after the harvest in order to send the workers back to Mexico. Similarly, during economic downturns, the Border Patrol would step up enforcement to ensure the state did not have to provide for the unemployed laborers. These roundups would often happen just before payday, so agribusinesses got the labor and the agents got their apprehension quotas, but the Mexican workers were not paid.Outside the illuminating history of the force itself, much of what Jones offers here is a delineation of the laws that define where BP responsibilities and limitations lie, looking particularly closely at several Supreme Court decisions. We have all heard of Roe v Wade and Brown v the Board of Ed, cases decided (some later undecided) by the Supreme Court (SCOTUS), that were major legal landmarks. Roe established a right of privacy that made abortion legal across the nation. Brown established that separate-but-equal was not a justification for continuing segregation in public schools. There are many such landmark cases. In Nobody is Protected, Reece Jones looks at the rulings that have allowed the Border Patrol to become a dangerous federal police force, subject to far fewer limitations than any other police force in the nation. These cases, while not household names like Roe and Brown, are of considerable importance for the civil rights of all of us, not just immigrants. In Almeida-Sanchez v. United States in 1973, SCOTUS allowed the BP to search a vehicle without any justification. In its 1975 decision in The United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, SCOTUS was ok with agents using racial profiling for selecting vehicles to stop. In 1976, SCOTUS held in The United States v. Martinez-Fuerte that BP could establish checkpoints in the interior of the USA and detain anyone to ask about their immigration status. So you live nowhere near the border, right? Shouldn’t impact you. But hold on a second. By administrative fiat, BP was granted a one hundred mile border zone. And not just from the expected Mexican and Canadian borders, but from the edge of the land of the USA. So, this means that two thirds of the population of the United States falls within BP’s rights-light border zone. Fourth Amendment? What fourth amendment? Jones reports on a crusader named Terry Bressi, an astronomer who has been stopped 574 times (as of the writing of the book) while driving to work at an interior checkpoint. He got fed up and started videotaping all his interactions with checkpoint law enforcement, for posting on line. They did not like that. They hated even more that he knew his rights and stood up to bullying by local cops who had been assigned to the checkpoint. You will learn a lot here. About a policy of Prevention through Deterrence that channeled thousands of would be immigrants and asylum seekers away from normal points of entry, toward perilous crossings. And if they should not survive the effort? Sorry, not our problem. And they try to interfere with people who simply want to save the lives of those coming into our country at risk of their own lives. In addition to failing to properly search for missing people in the border zone, the Border Patrol also actively disrupts efforts by humanitarian agencies. Beyond the destruction of water drops and aid stations, they often refuse to provide location information to other rescuers, deny access to interview people in Border Patrol custody who were with the missing person, and harass search teams in the border zone.You will learn of agency mission creep, from border control to drug enforcement to testing for radiation in vehicles (which catches a lot of cancer patients, but so far no dirty bomb terrorists) to actions that are blatantly political in nature and patently illegal. I expect you will not be shocked to learn that abuse by BP personnel goes largely unpunished. No action against the agent was taken in over 95% of cases of reported abuse. When the Inspector General for the agency tried to investigate the 25% of BP deaths-in-custody that were deemed suspicious, he was stopped (this last bit is from the This Is Hell interview, not the book). The BP manifests a Wild West mentality that is not much changed from when it was staffed with slave hunters and disgruntled confederates. One thing that has changed is the increasing politicization of immigration by fear-mongering Republican demagogues, and the increased concern over national security brought about by 9/11. There are vastly more agents on the force today. In the 1970s, for example, there were only about fifteen hundred BP agents. Today, just in the BP wing of Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) there are almost twenty thousand. The Field Operations branch adds another twenty thousand, and the Air and Marine Operations branch tops that off with another eighteen hundred. Another twenty thou in ICE, and it gets even larger. Jones may not be entirely correct when he says that the Border Patrol, per se, is the largest police force in the USA, but when these four connected wings are considered as one, ok, yeah, it is. Jones offers some do-able solutions in addition to proposing legislative changes that might rein in this growing giant, and increasing threat to the rights of all Americans. It is usual for books on policy to toss out solutions that have zero chance of seeing the light of day. So, sensibility here is most welcome. I have two gripes with the book. There needed to be considerable attention paid to the SCOTUS decisions that have allowed the BP to expand its legal domain. But Jones dug a bit too deep at times, incorporating intel that slowed the overall narrative without adding a lot. In fact, a better title for this might have been The Gateway to Absolute Police Power: SCOTUS and the Border Patrol. Second is that there is no index. Maybe not a big deal if one is reading an EPUB and can search at will, but in a dead-trees-and-ink book, it is a decided flaw. Bottom line is that Reece Jones has done us all a service in reporting on how a federal police agency has grown way larger than it needs to be, has accumulated more power than it requirea to do its job, and has used that power to feed itself, to the detriment of the nation. He points out in the interview that border security has become an “industrial-complex” much like its military cousin, albeit on a smaller scale, with diverse public and private vested interests fighting to sustain and expand the agency, regardless of the value returned on investment. It is a dark portrait, but hopefully, by Jones shining some light on it, changes might be prompted that can rein in the beast before it devours what rights we have left. Despite the transformation of the border in the public imagination, the people arriving there are largely the same as they always were. The majority are still migrant farm and factory workers from Mexico. In the past few years, they have been joined by entire families fleeing violence in Central America. These families with small children, who turn themselves in to the Border Patrol as soon as they step foot in the United States, in order to apply for asylum, pose no threat and deserve humane treatment. However, that is not what they have received. As journalist Garrett Graf memorably put it, “CBP went out and recruited Rambo, when it turned out the agency needed Mother Teresa.”Review first posted – 7/29/22 Publication dates ----------Hardcover - 7/5/22 ----------Trade paperback - 7/11/23 I received a hardcover of Nobody is Protected from Counterpoint in return for a fair review. Thanks, KQM. [image] [image] [image] [image] This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the Reece Jones’s personal and Twitter pages Profile - from Counterpoint REECE JONES is a Guggenheim Fellow. He is a professor and the chair of the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawai’i. He is the author of three books, the award-winning Border Walls and Violent Borders, as well as White Borders. He is the editor in chief of the journal Geopolitics and he lives in Honolulu with his family. Interview -----This is Hell - Nobody is Protected / Reece Jones - audio – 52:10 - by Chuck Mertz – this is outstanding! Items of Interest -----Borderless - excerpt -----The Intercept – 7/12/19 - BORDER PATROL CHIEF CARLA PROVOST WAS A MEMBER OF SECRET FACEBOOK GROUP by Ryan Deveaux -----No More Deaths - an NGO doing humanitarian work at the border -----Holding Border Patrol Accountable: Terry Bressi on Recording his 300+ Checkpoint interactions (probably over 600 by now) -----My review of The Line Becomes a River, a wonderful memoir by a former BP agent -----Washington Post - September 18, 2022 - How to prevent customs agents from copying your phone’s content by Tatum Hunter ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jul 06, 2022
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Jul 19, 2022
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Jul 27, 2022
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Hardcover
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0593337697
| 9780593337691
| 0593337697
| 4.37
| 86,524
| Apr 12, 2022
| Apr 12, 2022
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it was amazing
| I had a hand in breaking all of this. I had to have a hand in fixing it.When does helping become controlling? When does loving become smothering? I had a hand in breaking all of this. I had to have a hand in fixing it.When does helping become controlling? When does loving become smothering? When does zeal become interference? How does one do what one knows is best without crossing the line? Civil Townsend, a 23-year-old nurse in the Montgomery Alabama of 1973 has to figure all that out. Working for a federally funded family planning clinic, Civil is one of several nurses responsible for administering Depo-Provera shots to young women patients. The Williams family is her first case. They live in a cabin that is little more than a shack on a farmer’s property, Mace, the father, Mrs Williams, his mother, and two girls, Erica and India. Civil does her job, but after having administered the shots learns that neither eleven-year-old India nor thirteen-year-old Erika has had her first period. In fact, neither of the girls has even kissed a boy yet. So why are they receiving birth-control shots? She learns as well that there are questions about the safety of the shots, which had been found to cause cancer in test animals. She starts looking into what might be done about this. [image] Dolen Perkins-Valdez - image from American University Civil has the hard-charging enthusiasm of a rookie, eager to do all in her power to help those in need. Her background is nothing like that of her patients. Her father is a doctor, and her mother an artist. They raised her to do good, even named her for their aspirations of achieving civil rights for black people. Civil learns how hard it is to go up against authorityCivil does everything she can to help the family, gets them some public services, a decent place to live, schooling. And she has an impact, but, on a day when Civil is not working, the head nurse at the clinic tricks the family into signing papers agreeing to the girls’ sterilization. Civil’s alarm turns to rage, and then to fighting for change, so this outrage can never happen again to other unsuspecting girls and young women. It is 1973, only a year since the infamous, forty-years-long Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment was finally shut down. In that one, hundreds of black men were supposedly being treated for syphilis, but in fact no one was being treated. Of the four hundred who were diagnosed with the disease, one hundred died of syphilis directly or complications from the disease. Dozens of wives were infected, and children were born already afflicted. All this, to see how syphilis ran its course in the untreated. Civil’s activity gets a lawsuit started locally. But soon a young civil rights lawyer, Lou Feldman, is brought in. He transforms it into a national cause célèbre, as the case shifts from looking at the individual harm done to the Williams family to the national disgrace of the forced sterilization of tens thousands. Our research reveals that over the past few years, nearly one hundred fifty thousand low-income women from all over the nation have been sterilized under federally funded programs.He wants the laws changed, to end this practice. It is a huge concern for the Black community, but the novel makes clear that there were other groups who were victimized by this heinous practice. The story take place in two, very unequal timelines. The frame is Civil at sixty-seven, a doctor in 2016, returning to Montgomery after a long absence to see the Williams girls. India is dying. This offers us an ongoing where-are-they-now report. The bulk of the novel takes place in 1973 and immediately after. Civil struggles with her guilt over having played a part in this horror. It is clear that the notions that had supported legislators allowing such things were not entirely unfamiliar. Civil talks with Lou about the history of eugenics. “So the idea was what . . . to stop us from having children because we were inferior?” I whispered.Perkins-Valdez offers a most welcome maturity of perspective. Lou, a young, white lawyer, is viewed with suspicion to begin, but earns the community’s trust with his dedication, brilliance, grueling work habits, and effectiveness. He is lauded as a hero, while Mrs Seager, the head nurse, is shown as a flawed person who, though she was doing something terrible, thought she was doing the right thing. Characters take or avoid difficult decisions for understandable reasons. Even a black Tuskegee librarian whom Civil admires has a hard time understanding how she did not see what was going on right under her nose. There is very little good vs evil going on here in the character portrayals, only in the broader horror of a dark-hearted, racist and classist policy. One of the many joys of the book is the portrayal of a time and place. There are details that add to the touch and feel. The first thing that hit me was the odor. Urine. Body funk. Dog. All mixed with the stench of something salty stewing in a pot. A one-room house encased in rotted boards. A single window with a piece of sheet hanging over it. It was dark except for the sun streaming through the screen door and peeking through the holes in the walls. As my eyes adjusted, I saw that there were clothes piled on the bed, as if somebody had stopped by and dumped them. Pots, pans, and shoes lay strewn about on the dirt floor. Flies buzzed and circled the air. Four people lived in one room, and there wasn’t enough space. A lot of people in Montgomery didn’t have running water, but this went beyond that. I had to fight back vomit.Some are more cultural, like the perceptions middle class black people in Montgomery had of poor black people, and the less fraught parallel football culture in which Alabama vs Auburn, followed by white people, is replaced for the black population with Alabama A&M vs Alabama State. News to me. We also get a taste of the segregation of the time, how bathroom accessibility while on the road could be problematic for those of the wrong skin color, how a beach that used to be open to all, and featured black-owned businesses, now required one to pay a park ranger and display a piece of paper on your car, the businesses now long gone. The case on which Perkins-Valdez based her novel was a real one, Relf vs Weinberger, filed in July, 1973 in Washington D.C. by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Joseph Levin, one of the Center’s founders, was the young lawyer who prosecuted the case. Mary Alice was 14 and Minnie was 12 when they became victims of the abusive practice of sterilizing poor, black women in the South. Their mother, who had very little education and was illiterate, signed an "X" on a piece of paper, expecting her daughters, who were both mentally disabled, would be given birth control shots. Instead, the young women were surgically sterilized and robbed of their right to ever bear children of their own. - from the SPLCThe story ultimately is about the horror of forced sterilization on poor black people and other classes deemed unfit to breed. You will learn a lot about a crime against humanity that was perpetrated by our own government, and the story of how this injustice was fought. But if the story does not engage, you may not get the benefit of the new knowledge it delivers. Thankfully, there need be no concern on that score. While we may echo the commentary of others to Civil that she did not bear any responsibility for what was done, that her guilt was helping no one, here is a very full-bodied portrait, of a flawed character. One who makes mistakes. A young person who has not yet learned when to push forward, when to take a step back. We see her learning this and can applaud when she takes steps in the proper direction. We also get to see the difficult family dynamic she must negotiate with her own parents, the burden of expectation that has been fitted to her broad shoulders, and the challenge of loving the Williams family, but not too much. And we have a front row seat to her relationships, her struggles, with friends and colleagues. Take My Hand is a wonderful addition to the Perkins-Valdez oeuvre, begun with her outstanding 2009 novel, Wench, and followed by Balm in 2015. She has a fourth in the works, due to her publisher in October 2022, set in early 1900s North Carolina. So maybe a 2023 release? A helping hand is often that, kindly meant, but maybe, sometimes, before you put your hand in another’s, you might want to know where it has been, and where it might be taking you. If the hand is attached to Dolen Perklins-Valdez, grasp it and hold on. It will take you somewhere wonderful. I had never known that good intentions could be just as destructive as bad ones. Review posted – April 22, 2022 Publication dates ----------Hardcover – April 12, 2022 ----------Trade paperback - April 4, 2023 I received an ARE of Take my Hand from Berkley in return for a fair review. Thanks to Elisha K., and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, FB, Instagram, and Twitter pages Profile – from Simon & Schuster (mostly) and her site Dolen Perkins-Valdez, PhD, is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Wench. In 2011, she was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for fiction. She was also awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Dr. Perkins-Valdez taught in the Stonecoast (Maine) MFA program and lives in Washington, DC, with her family. She is currently Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, and is Associate Professor in the Literature Department at American University.Interviews -----Publishers Weekly - Dolen Perkins-Valdez's 'Take My Hand' Reaches for Hard Truths by Jen Doll there was something about the Relf sisters she kept coming back to. “The thing that struck me about it was that, even though they’re only really mentioned in passing whenever we talk about this, it was a big deal at the time,” she says. The sisters’ ordeal was heavily covered in the press, and they appeared before a Senate subcommittee led by Sen. Ted Kennedy. “There were so many parts of it, to me, that felt absolutely remarkable. I think some people had heard a little bit about it, but they didn’t know enough. I wanted people to know enough.”-----Politics and Prose bookstore - Dolen Perkins-Valdez — Take My Hand - in conversation with Victoria Christopher Murray The sound level is uneven, which often makes it difficult to hear. But if you have a sound system the Q/A kicks in My review of earlier work by the author -----2010 - Wench Songs/Music ----- Booker T. and the M.G.s - Behave Yourself - chapter 14 -----Mahalia Jackson - Precious Lord Take My Hand - the epigraph notes MLK requesting this be played on his final day -----Stevie Wonder - You Are the Sunshine of My Life - chapter 20 Items of Interest -----Eunice Rivers - re the Tuskegee syphilis experiment -----Mayo Clinic - Depo-Provera Depo-Provera is a well-known brand name for medroxyprogesterone acetate, a contraceptive injection that contains the hormone progestin. Depo-Provera is given as an injection every three months. Depo-Provera typically suppresses ovulation, keeping your ovaries from releasing an egg. It also thickens cervical mucus to keep sperm from reaching the egg.----- Mississippi Appendectomy -----Southern Poverty Law Center - RELF V. WEINBERGER - the real-world case on which the novel is based -----Wiki on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study -----AP - July 12, 2023 - Canada’s Indigenous women forcibly sterilized decades after other rich countries stopped by Maria Cheng ...more |
Notes are private!
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Apr 06, 2022
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Apr 19, 2022
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Hardcover
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B098PDDZW3
| 4.09
| 19,119
| Sep 21, 2021
| Sep 21, 2021
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it was amazing
| Milley believed January 6 was a planned, coordinated, synchronized attack on the very heart of American democracy, designed to overthrow the govern Milley believed January 6 was a planned, coordinated, synchronized attack on the very heart of American democracy, designed to overthrow the government to prevent the constitutional certification of a legitimate election won by Joe Biden.-------------------------------------- Milley summarized and scribbled. “Big Threat: domestic terrorism.”The title, Peril, is drawn from President Joe Biden’s inaugural address, in which he says “We have much to do in this winter of peril…” It is the epigraph for the book. Winter is not coming. It is bloody well here, and has been here a lot longer than most folks realize. Woodward and his much younger partner, Bob Costa, national political reporter for the Washington Post, look over some of what we have endured, consider the peril we face today, and give us plenty to think about concerning what lies ahead. Biden’s speech addresses not only the threat to our democracy, but the threat to our safety from COVID variants, the cry for racial justice, and the threat to our planet from global warming. This book focuses on the threat to American democracy. [image] Bob Woodward and Robert Costa - image from CNN It rolls along on two parallel tracks. One is Trump’s attempt to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election. The other is Joe Biden’s determination to preserve the soul of our nation, focusing on his campaign, and the first few months of his administration. The chapters alternate, more or less between Trump and Biden. “Was that from this book?” One peril to be faced in reading this book is that of fixing what one read, when, where, and by whom, given the firehose flood of books on the Trump era. I addressed that in my review of I Alone Can Fix It. If this is of interest you can click here for a look. [image] Trump’s mob assaults the Capitol on January 6, 2021 - image from Business Insider January 6, 2021 is a date which will live in infamy. That was the day on which American democracy was nearly bombed into surrender by a sneak attack on the citadel of our national values. That was the day on which a failed Trump-led coup could easily have made moot the election he had just lost, and rendered American elections, certainly presidential elections, meaningless. It was the coming out party for an American brand of fascism that has long been an undercurrent, and sometimes much more, in our political life as a nation, a dark but always-present element in our population that Trump had recruited and encouraged for years, even before he ran for office. It is clear that, to the extent that we will ever know all the details of the coup plot, it is likely to come from the Congressional January 6 Committee’s final report, in combination with unredacted testimony given to that committee, testimony given at what we hope will be very public trials of those in charge of the effort, and intrepid reporters. The authors count among that final group. While offering far from a complete portrait of the plot, they have given us an insider’s look at what people in the administration and the government beyond that faced on 1/6 (which I personally think should be called Desecration Day.) And what they had to deal with in the months leading up to it. [image] Milley speaking with Trump - image from DNYUZ It was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley whose intercession with his Chinese counterpart talked the Chinese military down from a concern that Trump might launch an attack on China in order to remain in office, not once but twice. As the Chinese were again concerned what our imbalanced president might do after his coup attempt failed. There was also concern that Trump would attack Iran in an attempt to secure his own position. I doubt Israel would have appreciated the incomings such an action would have surely generated. He also floated the idea of evacuating troops from Afghanistan in January, 2021, with minimal planning. Thankfully he was dissuaded from that impulse as well. Milley is the official most in the limelight here. He was appointed to that post by Donald Trump. In Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig’s book I Alone Can Fix It, Milley told them of his concerns about the dangers of a right-wing coup. There is plenty more of that in this book as well. We hear a lot from Trump-whisperer Lindsey Graham about his conversations with Trump, who appears to have actually convinced himself of the truth of his own lies. He is a fine representative of those who, while remaining loyal to Trump, try to counsel him to sane courses of action. [image] Donald Trump pretends to check his watch as Senator Lindsey Graham speaks at the White - image and text from The Guardian We get a look at the conversations among the cabinet level officials, unwilling to allow him to use the US military as his private army. We learn what analyses they shared about the dangers facing the nation, what agreements they came to among themselves, what steps they took, and what mistakes they made. We get a look at how these and other level-headed adults in the administration did whatever they could to keep Trump from causing irreparable harm to the nation with his impulsive-driven, self-serving, poorly-informed decision-making. Part of all this included making certain that proper chains of command would be followed should Trump decide to start a war as a Wag the Dog self-preservation move, or command the military to take actions that were illegal. Days after the election, Trump fired Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, in large part for his public opposition to the use of the military to suppress BLM protests. It was certainly clear to those tracking Trump’s actions that Trump wanted the US military to be his personal security force, and Esper was an impediment. In fact, it was appropriate for the military to be brought to bear to battle an insurrection, and the delays in the military’s response can be traced to the Department of Defense, by then Esper-free, sitting on its hands for far too long. [image] Defense Secretary Mark Esper – fired after the election - image from Reuters via BBC One item that becomes clear from the telling here is that Mike Pence did his best to find a way to Yes for Trump, but was unable. It is also clear that Trump pushed Pence a step too far when he issued a press release claiming that the Vice President agreed with Trump’s lie that the VP had the legal right to refuse to accept the electoral votes of any state. It was the only thing, apparently, in four years in office, that generated a spine in the relentlessly invertebrate Pence, driving him into bunker mode. It is unfortunate that Pence will likely be remembered more for this single act than for his years of pathetic subservience to and enabling of an American Mussolini. It is chilling to consider that had there been alternate slates of electors ready to bring to bear, Pence might have actually done the deed. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi called him repeatedly after the insurrection, wanting him to invoke the 25th amendment. He refused to take their calls, calling a quick halt to his vertebrate moment. [image] Mike Pence flees the mob on 1/6 - image from The Guardian The book will (it certainly should) make your blood boil. The Founders put together a guiding document and a set of rules that presumed they would be carried out by honorable officials. They did not count on the possibility of a sociopath being elected president. Someone with not only no respect, but outright contempt, for the rule of law. He really claimed, and maybe even believed in his diseased mind, like Louis XIV, who famously said “L’etat est moi,” that he, personally, was the state. Bottom line is that when you see Woodward and Costa being interviewed about this book, or talking about the events they covered, their hair is on fire. They understand what it was that happened, namely that not only did the nation narrowly avoid a fascist coup that would have made the USA a dictatorship, but that the party of the guy who ordered it is all lined up and ready to goose-step their way to another try. We may have survived Trump’s 2021 coup attempt, but it is clear that he will try again, and there are far too many who are more than willing to go along, whether actively or passively. [image] Trump with Steve Bannon - image from CNN Now, as for the other part of this book. It should come as a salve for the angst generated by the reporting on Trump. They follow Biden’s decision to run, following the Charlottesville “good people on both sides” outrage, convinced that the very soul of the nation was imperiled, and that he could offer a way out of this very dark cloud, more so than other extant or potential candidates. We get to see a very human Biden, sincere, knowledgeable, willing to listen to well-informed and well-meant advice, willing to make needed adjustments, willing to talk to anyone, anywhere, and unwilling to be baited by Trumpian taunts and lies. We are let in to some of the family troubles the Bidens have endured, that they continue to endure. Biden is shown as the anti-Trump, an incredibly decent person, gifted at making personal contact with people, caring about people, remembering them, willing to spend unheard of amounts of time with people who could offer him nothing but their shared pain. It shows candidate Biden behaving in a presidential manner when the actual president would not. It is a warm portrait of a man the authors have certainly seen enough of to know. They also show him getting tough in legislative negotiations, and showing his exasperation when sanity, and decency, seem insufficient to accomplish a goal. The book continues into March 2021, so shows Biden as president as well as merely a candidate. But, of course, being Washington reporters, they feel it necessary to take a swing or two. In one instance they report on Biden snapping at a reporter who was being particularly dickish as if there was something wrong with that. That Biden later apologized was the real fault here. The reporter merited being smacked down. Their portrayal was that this was a kind of gaffe. Take a moment to roll your eyes here. The Beltway media have particular story lines that they adhere to, regardless of the facts. Reporting Biden as particularly gaffe-ridden is among them. He is no more so than most other people. We all misstate things at times. But they seem eager, drooling even for a chance to catch another one and reinforce the image. Their treatment of Biden’s entirely appropriate reaction to a hostile reporter is of a cloth with that mindlessness. [image] Presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden takes a picture with the Downs family after campaigning in Rehoboth Beach. - image and text from the Cape Gazette Gripes (in addition to the one above) As happens far too often in books of this sort, namely political history books put together largely through personal interviews, the authors sometimes slip into stenography mode. They report, presumably straight-faced, about Senate Majority, now Minority Leader Mitch McConnell trotting out his spin about tax cuts for the rich being “tax reform” and crediting Trump for an economy that had been humming along quite nicely when he took office. I call BS. They continue in this mode about McConnell working with cabinet members trying to push Trump to some semblance of normal. Take nothing McConnell reports himself saying at face value. Second-party confirmation is always needed there. Ditto for Lindsey Graham. Former Republican and Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt issued a statement about Graham…saying that many people have tried to understand Graham over the years. He encouraged people not to look at it "through the prism of the manifest inconsistencies that exist between things he used to believe and what he's doing now."Graham is quoted at length here, and it is all self-serving. Douse that with salt before consuming. Gripes, notwithstanding, Peril is an important book, another in a large library of reporting on the workings of the Trump administration, and particularly at how close Trump’s attempted coup came to succeeding. There are many lessons to be learned here. One is that the January 6th Committee should interview, whether via subpoena or not, all the players involved in orchestrating the insurrection, including Trump, and that they need to complete their report and make all necessary criminal referrals to the Department of Justice before Republicans have a chance to regain control of the House and shut them down. We learn that the norms and rules of American government are fatally flawed, allowing the dark-hearted to game the system for their political and personal advantage. We learn that even in dark times there are officials willing to put their careers, and even their lives on the line to stand up for the ideals and institutions, that Americans claim to admire and respect. We learn that there need to be fixes made to the Electoral Count Act of 1887 to make sure that each state’s electors truthfully represent the decision of the voters. [image] Attorney John Eastman, left, speaks next to Rudy Giuliani at Donald Trump’s rally on 6 January - Image and text from Reuters, by way of The Guardian – photo by Jim, Bourg The book’s epigraph cut short Biden’s inaugural statement. The full sentence reads We will press forward with speed and urgency, for we have much to do in this winter of peril and possibility. Despite the subsequent COVID variants that have killed or damaged so many in our nation, and the world, a major relief bill made it through a very marginally Democratic Congress. Other measures are needed, but hope that more can be done remains alive, despite Joe Manchin. There are hopeful signs in many parts of the nation that democracy is on the rise… [image] Hmmm, reviewus interruptus. Looks like we have run out of space here on Goodreads. Despair not, the full review, including EXTRA STUFF, is on my site, Coot’s Reviews. See you there. [image] [image] [image] [image] ...more |
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Oct 05, 2021
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Dec 27, 2021
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Kindle Edition
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1250758777
| 9781250758774
| 1250758777
| 3.50
| 16
| unknown
| May 18, 2021
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liked it
| In 2020, after trillions of dollars in military expenditures and multiple wars, a virus originating in a Chinese “wet market” would inflict even mo In 2020, after trillions of dollars in military expenditures and multiple wars, a virus originating in a Chinese “wet market” would inflict even more economic and human damage. Overcoming the most lethal threats of the twenty-first century—at least those threats that pose the greatest risk to the health and well-being of the average citizen—will require staying the itchy trigger finger of militarized statecraft. Ultimately, achieving true security will require embracing a broader “whole of government” and “whole of nation” set of tools that reflect the full strength of America.If Jane Harman had been on stage at the Oscars instead of Chris Rock, an out of control actor with anger issues would have failed to land the slap heard round the world. Harman would have ducked. It is clear from reading Insanity Defense that she has mastered the pugilistic art of the bob and weave. And as she does so, and despite her legislative career as a Democrat, it appears that her sweet science strategy has her tending to circle to the right. [image] Jane Harman - image from Politico Jane Harman was a United States Representative from California’s 38th District from 1993 to 1999, and from 2001 to 2011. Security was her primary beat. She chaired the Homeland Security Committee’s Intelligence Subcommittee from 2007 to 2011 and was the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee from 2002 to 2006. She moved on to head the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 2011, where she remained until retiring in 2021. So, she has been there and done that for matters concerning national security for quite some time. She is a Democrat, regarded as liberal by some and a centrist by others. The liberal Americans for Democratic Action gave her a 95% rating, while Politico refers to her as one of the leading centrist voices in the Democratic Party on intelligence and national security. During her time in office, she was able to work with some Republicans to revamp the organization of American spy agencies. It has been reported that she took the Wilson Center gig because it offered an opportunity to continue working on issues of interest in a bipartisan manner, something that was no longer possible as a representative, given the GOP’s scorched-earth partisanship. It is also possible that she left Congress when the Democrats’ minority status would have left her with little effective influence for at least two years. Insanity Defense is not so much a memoir as it is a critique of the changes that have not been made to American defense policy since the end of the Cold War. My work in the defense and intelligence space spans more than three decades, and I am vexed by the fact that policies designed to protect America are actually making us less safe. I call this “insanity defense”: doing the same thing again and again and expecting it to enhance our security.Her look at the last thirty years includes five administrations, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama, and Trump, pointing out how she believes they failed on foreign policy, taking on several security issues that she believes have not been adequately addressed. Trump is mentioned more than once, and not positively, but is given less attention than his predecessors. More attention to his impact on US military and intelligence policy would have been most welcome. The memoirish bits have to do with her work on committees and other positions she has held dealing with military and intelligence issues. There is nothing in here about her personal life other than events relating to her runs for office and other policy-related jobs she has held. Harman’s basic point is valid. She makes a strong case for the need to be flexible in a variety of ways in order to address ever-changing security needs, cope with new threats, in diverse forms, and not spend every penny we have as nation on new hardware designed to win World War II. Of course that would require that Representatives and Senators with considerable defense industry constituencies step back from advocating for government spending that benefits their industries at the cost of less expensive, and potentially more effective alternate approaches. Good luck with that. There is not a lot that will be news to you in this book. I appreciate that Harman offers some specifics on proposals that were made that could help provide needed coverage of defense needs (like drone subs that could track whatever needed tracking, running for months at a time) without requiring megabucks being spent on traditional tech, such as aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, and ever more complicated and expensive fighter jets. (That means you, F-35) Some of the interactions she reports with decision-makers will only reinforce your take on them. Nothing to see here, move along. A major point in the book is that Congress has been marginalized by the White House on matters of military action and intelligence, that power has become far too concentrated in an increasingly unitary executive. She refers to Dick Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington. As far as Addington was concerned, when Article II said that “the executive Power shall be vested in a President,” well, that was the end of it—all power, not some power or whatever power Congress provided or allowed. The concept of the “unitary executive,” once an obscure theory at the right fringe of legal thinking, would become the operating manual for the Bush presidency when it came to security policy. I called this a “bloodless coup”—a dramatic power shift in government that occurred almost entirely out of view at the time. Addington was always courtly and polite with me personally. But when it came to any role for Congress, his answer was always a very firm no.Harman’s solutions for future improvement rely on somehow finding again the holy grail of bipartisanship. I believe that she was blinded to the extant political realities by her prior experience of meaningful bi-partisanship. Newt Gingrich killed it, and Mitch McConnell incinerated the body. Harman appears to be living in a bit of a time warp, in which she does not recognize that the civil bipartisanship that allowed Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill to be friends has taken a hard uppercut to the chin and is lying unconscious on the mat. She certainly should be aware. It was that partisanship that some say drove her from Congress in 2011. And yet… The greater Obama’s frustration with recalcitrant Republican majorities—first the Tea Party–dominated House, then the Mitch McConnell–led Senate—the more he would exercise executive action on a range of issues.As if it were Obama’s frustration and not Republican intransigence that was at fault. McConnell left him no option, having publicly declared that he would oppose all bills favored by the White House. It takes two for bipartisanship, and Obama certainly tried, but Harman is blaming the victim here. (duck) I look at what went wrong—and could go right again—through the lens of my own experience: how political moderates became first hunted and then an endangered species, caught in the crossfire between the far left and the far right. The punishment for bipartisanship became harsh and immediate. The business model shifted from working together to solve urgent problems facing the country to blaming the other side for not solving the urgent problems.Yet more worthless both-sidism from Harman. Just look at the range of opinions in the Democratic party and then look at the Republicans. Only one party is purging moderates. (sucker punch) This is not to say that she saves all her barbs for Dems. Harman has plenty to say about the Bush (43) administration wasting the opportunity offered by 9/11 and the sympathy the USA gained from the world from that event, pivoting to a “war on terror” that cost trillions of dollars, tens of thousands of lives, and accomplished not a lot. A classic case of using old tech against a new problem. Winston Churchill famously said “Generals are always prepared to fight the last war.” It appears that politicians share that malady. She strongly decries the Bush (43) administration’s embrace of secrecy and a unitary executive view of presidential power, as noted above. She rightly points out instances in which both Republican and Democratic presidents have played fast and loose with restrictions on their executive activities, particularly in matters of war and intelligence. But her tendency to pull her punches on Republicans while not offering the same consideration to Dems made the book feel off balance. One of many mysteries about Cheney is how someone who had risen to House minority whip while a congressman from Wyoming could become so contemptuous of the institution he once helped lead.This is not at all a mystery. Cheney was hungry for power, by any means possible. That the author fails to see or admit this speaks to either a surprising naivete or a willful ignorance. She cites her early experience of him as gracious but then cites a far cry from the obsessive almost maniacal figure he would be portrayed as, not that he was, but as he was portrayed as. (bob) She goes on to tell of asking VP Cheney directly to expand from two the list of Representatives currently kept informed about a spy project called Stellar Wind (a domestic spying program with a very shaky legal foundation) and his one word answer, “No.” She does a similar thing with Jeremy Bremer re the disastrous de-Baathification program he signed off on in Iraq, trying to lay blame on higher-ups. So what? Even if they ordered him to do it, he still did it. The man could have resigned if he opposed the order. (weave) Do we need to change in our approaches to military thought and intelligence gathering? Sure. This presumes, of course, that the change has not already taken place, and we just don’t know about it. I am not saying that this is the case, just that it is difficult to ascertain where the truth lies in such policy areas. Do we need to pare back the unitary presidency? Absolutely, or else the nation becomes an autocracy. Do we need Congress to regain oversight, and influence on policy issued? Definitely, with the caveat that this access isn’t used solely to undermine the administration, whichever party holds the White House, but to interact with the administration to make sure the stated goals and methods are kosher. Do we need to read Jane Harman’s Insanity Defense? There is merit in the raising of important issues of national importance and value in imparting the benefit of her experience over three decades of public service. As a refresher, this book makes some sense, offering one a chance to brush up on some meaningful legislative history, some war policy history. But this is not at all a must read. So, the final bell rings and the referee checks with the judges. The result? Split Decision. One of the least known yet most consequential documents filed immediately after 9/11 was a memorandum of notification to Congress, commonly referred to as a “finding,” which announced that the CIA would be conducting operations that would not be acknowledged. At the time, this notification, submitted on September 17, 2001, seemed pro forma; we all took it as a given that aggressive covert activity would—indeed, must—be part of our response to the horrific attacks. Yet this same finding would cover the CIA black sites, enhanced interrogations, and targeted killings abroad for nearly two decades. Review posted – April 1, 2022 Publication date – May 18, 2021 I received an ARE of Insanity Defense from Saint Martin’s Press in return for a fair review, and a few bits of classified intel Thanks, folks. And thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. [image] [image] [image] [image] This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Interviews -----Woodrow Wilson Center - Insanity Defense: Why Our Failure to Confront Hard National Security Problems Makes Us Less Safe with David Sanger – video - 57:31 ----- Jane Harman Steps Down: A Look Back on a Decade of Leadership and Achievement by John Milewski - on her stepping down as director of the Wilson Center, and about her book – video - 30:02 Items of Interest from the author -----Foreign Affairs - A Crisis of Confidence - How Biden Can Restore Faith in U.S. Spy Agencies -----The Common Good - Combating Misinformation with Clint Watts and Jane Harman - video – 1:11:56 Items of Interest -----Stellar Wind -----Youngstown Sheet and Tube vs Sawyer re presidential power -----Sweet Science ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 03, 2021
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May 08, 2021
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Dec 17, 2021
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Hardcover
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0593298942
| 9780593298947
| 0593298942
| 4.39
| 10,358
| Jul 20, 2021
| Jul 20, 2021
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really liked it
| Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who worked in Lyndon Johnson’s White House and closely studied many presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, said, “I Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who worked in Lyndon Johnson’s White House and closely studied many presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, said, “I have spent my entire career with presidents and there is nothing like this other than the 1850s, when events led inevitably to the Civil War.-------------------------------------- Here’s the deal, guys: These guys are Nazis, they’re boogaloo boys, they’re Proud Boys. These are the same people we fought in World War II,” Milley told them. “Everyone in this room, whether you’re a cop, whether you’re a soldier, we’re going to stop these guys to make sure we have a peaceful transfer of power. We’re going to put a ring of steel around this city and the Nazis aren’t getting in.”I did not intend to write a full review for this one. It came out in July. I did not start reading it until August, and did not finish reading it until late September. That is what happens when I read a book on my phone, in addition to the two I am usually reading, one at my desk and the other at bedtime. But I was going to offer a few thoughts. Typed a line or two and then my fingers started pounding away at the keyboard pretty much all on their own. I astral projected myself to the kitchen to whip up a sandwich, make some tea and when I returned they were still banging away. I am sure there is a lesson in there about compulsion. [image] Phil Rucker and Carole Leonnig - image from Porter Square Books There have been, currently are, and no doubt will continue to be many books written about the Trump years. I Alone Can Fix It tracks the final year of Trump’s presidency, notes that he had faced no major problems until 2020, and then proved incapable of managing the ones that presented, seeking only his own aggrandizement, while clinging to power at all costs. If you read books of this sort all the time, if you read The Washington Post, The New York Times, or other world newspapers, watch CNN, BBC, MSNBC, and other at-least-somewhat-responsible news sources, much of what is in this book will not be all that surprising. In tracking Trump’s 2020+, I Alone Can Fix It offers inside looks at the actions and discussions, the conflicts and challenges inside the White House, almost day-by-day. Much that is detailed here has been reported before. And a lot of the new material has been outed in leaks to newspapers and TV political shows. Interviews with the authors chip away even more at the new-ness of the material, if you are coming to it any time after its initial week or two of release. Trump’s rash and retaliatory dismissal of [Acting DNI Joseph] Maguire would compel retired Admiral William McRaven, who oversaw the Navy SEALs raid that killed Osama bin Laden, to write: “As Americans, we should be frightened—deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can’t speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security—then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.“I am betting it is not news to you, for example, that when 1/6 was happening, Liz Cheney screamed at Trump toady Jim Jordan (who, as a wrestling coach at Ohio State University, had participated in a coverup of sexual abuse of wrestlers within the program) “Get away from me. You fucking did this.’” Or that Trump wanted to use the army to put down demonstrations in American cities. Or that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Milley was concerned that Trump wanted to use the American military to keep himself in office. Carol Leonnig (National investigative reporter focused on the White House and government accountability) at the Washington Post and Phil Rucker (Washington Post White House Bureau Chief) are top tier political reporters. They sat with many of the principals in the administration, including Trump, and amassed a vast store of materials in pulling this tale together. It is a horror story. In doing so they have unearthed considerable detail that did not make it to the pages of daily reporting. It is a portrayal of Donald Trump as someone who is generally disinterested in the well-being of the nation, concerned only for himself, which comes as a surprise to exactly no one with eyes to see and an ability to reason. I take issue with the clearly self-serving nature of some of the interviews. Spinners are gonna spin and twirling is the name of the game in Washington politics. Bill Barr, for example, attests to his devotion to the law. How Leonnig and Rucker allowed such tripe into the book is beyond me. This from a guy who routinely politicized the Department of Justice to subvert justice, seek punishment of Trump enemies (otherwise known as truth-tellers) and neglect to trouble those accused and even convicted of crimes. Puh-leez. He also pretends that he was practically dragged from retirement to serve as AG when, in fact he had actively campaigned for the job. Sure wish they would have called him out on that steaming pile of poo. Esper, Milley, and Barr—were tracking intelligence and social media chatter for any signs of unrest on Election Day. They and their deputies at the Pentagon, Justice Department, and FBI were monitoring the possibility of protests breaking out among supporters on both sides. The trio also were on guard for the possibility that Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act in some way to quell protests or to perpetuate his power by somehow intervening in the election. This scenario weighed heavily on Esper and Milley because they controlled the military and had sworn an oath to the Constitution. Their duty was to protect a free and fair election and to prevent the military from being used for political purposes of any kind.Plenty more seek to burnish their records (the phrase polishing turds pops readily to mind) for history, eager to remove the fecal stench of attachment to the most corrupt administration in American history. I could have done with a bit more of Leonnig and Rucker pointing out for readers where the spinning ends and the truth begins. One of the heroes of this story is General Milley. Were his actions not confirmed by multiple other sources, one could be forgiven for suspecting that he was polishing his own…um…medals in reporting to Leonnig and Rucker his role in staving off Trump’s desire to use the military to suppress domestic dissent, and in working with other defense leaders, legislative leaders, and foreign military brass to help prevent what could easily have become a shooting war with China. But what he told them checks out. The man deserves even more medals, pre-shined. [image] General Mark Milley - image from New York Magazine One of the things that is most remarkable for its absence in this book is mention of Afghanistan. Really? That deal with the Taliban was not worth including? It makes sense, though. The MSM paid little attention to it when the deal was made, and largely ignored the fact that the actual Afghani government was not a party to the talks. They were more than happy, though, to jump on Biden’s back for implementing the shitty treaty by actually getting our troops out of an endless no-win war. Trump was rarely mentioned, and the awfulness of the deal, THAT TRUMP HAD NEGOTIATED, rarely merited serious coverage. Disappointing that Leonnig and Rucker seem to have skipped over this in their book. It was significant. It is an avocational hazard for those who consume political news in mass quantities that when there are so many books out about aspects of the same thing, namely the Trump disaster, it can be difficult to impossible to keep track of where particular stories originated. Also, each of the Trump era books is heralded in the press in the weeks leading up to publication with the juiciest bits from the opus du jour. The cacophony of revelations can make it impossible to discern the altos from the tenors from the sopranos from the basses. It all becomes one large chorus. Did I read about that in this book or that one, or that other one? Maybe I heard a piece about it on CNN, or BBC, or MSNBC, or one of the traditional network news shows. And no sooner does one finish one of these books that there are ten more peeping for attention like baby birds in a nest far outnumbering the worms their poor parents are able to scrounge. Thus, we get by with the news and political talk show interviews and daily early peeks at the books, hoping to be able to read at least enough of these things to get a clear picture. Like AI learning systems, there is a constant feed of information. At some point (although hopefully one has already achieved such a state) one internalizes the incoming stream, somehow manages to sort and categorize it, finds some sort of understanding and can use the collective intelligence to face new questions, problems, and situations with an informed base of knowledge, and generate a wise, informed decision, or opinion. At the very least we should have a sense of where to look to check out the latest claims and revelations. “A student of history, Milley saw Trump as the classic authoritarian leader with nothing to lose. He described to aides that he kept having this stomach-churning feeling that some of the worrisome early stages of twentieth-century fascism in Germany were replaying in twenty-first-century America. He saw parallels between Trump’s rhetoric of election fraud and Adolf Hitler’s insistence to his followers at the Nuremberg rallies that he was both a victim and their savior.To that end, the Leonnig and Rucker book is a welcome addition to the ongoing info-flow. We live in dangerous times, and they offer some of the nitty gritty of how the sausage is made, how the perils are generated, and sometimes averted, who the players are and how they acted in moments of crisis. In the long run it probably does not matter if you heard the relevant information in this book, in a Woodward book (I am currently reading Peril) or in one or more of the gazillion others that have emerged in the last few years. What matters is that we get the information, that it is brought to us by honest, intelligent, expert reporters and/or participants, and that it is presented in a readable, digestible form. Leonnig and Rucker are both Pulitzer winners. Keep your eyes out for any irregularities, of course, but these two are reliable, trustworthy sources. Add their work to your data feed and keep the info flowing. We need all the good intel we can get to counteract the 24/7/365 Republican lie machine and to face down the next coup attempt. Knowledge is power. Acquire it. Learn from it. Remember it. Use it. Review first posted – 12/3/2021 Publication date – 7/20/21 [image] [image] [image] [image] This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the Carol Leonnig’s WaPo profile and Twitter pages Links to Phil Rucker’s Instagram, WaPo profile, and Twitter pages Interviews -----Face the Nation - "I Alone Can Fix It" authors say former president learned he was "untouchable" from first impeachment - video - 07:46 -----The Guardian - Inside Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year by David Smith -----Commonwealth Club - Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker: Inside Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year by Yamiche Alcindor – video – 57:01 -----NPR – Fresh Air - Investigation finds federal agencies dismissed threats ahead of the Jan. 6 attack - audio - 42:00 – by Terry Gross - more about Leonnig’s book Zero Fail but worth a listen Items of Interest -----NY Times - Day of Rage: How Trump Supporters Took the U.S. Capitol- By Dmitriy Khavin, Haley Willis, Evan Hill, Natalie Reneau, Drew Jordan, Cora Engelbrecht, Christiaan Triebert, Stella Cooper, Malachy Browne and David Botti -----Washington Post - The Attack: Before, During and After - Reported by Devlin Barrett, Aaron C. Davis, Josh Dawsey, Amy Gardner, Tom Hamburger, Rosalind S. Helderman, Peter Hermann, Spencer S. Hsu, Paul Kane, Ashley Parker, Beth Reinhard, Philip Rucker and Cleve R. Wootson Jr. -- Written by Amy Gardner and Rosalind S. Helderman -- Visuals and design by Phoebe Connelly, Natalia Jiménez-Stuard, Tyler Remmel and Madison Walls Items of Interest from the authors -----Washington Post - list of recent articles -----Washington Post - list of recent articles ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 06, 2021
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Sep 27, 2021
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Sep 29, 2021
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Hardcover
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0593136381
| 9780593136386
| 0593136381
| 4.34
| 2,371
| Aug 17, 2021
| Aug 17, 2021
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it was amazing
| The wind slammed against the Harding-era transmission tower, ripping a heavy electrical line from its brittle iron hook. It was 6:15 A.M. The 143-p The wind slammed against the Harding-era transmission tower, ripping a heavy electrical line from its brittle iron hook. It was 6:15 A.M. The 143-pound, 115-kilovolt braided aluminum wire—known as a jumper cable—fell through the air. A piece of the rusted hook fell with it. The energized line produced a huge bolt of electricity, reaching temperatures up to 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit and zapping the steel tower like lightning as it charred the pillar black. Droplets of molten metal sprayed into the dry grass. That’s all it took.------------------------------------ …this was how the fire spread so quickly: It wasn’t a single unbroken front but a hail of embers.Welcome to the new normal. [image] sign - may you find paradise to be all its name implies - Image from KQED In November 2018, one hundred fifty miles north of San Francisco, the town of Paradise became the epicenter of what would be called The Camp Fire. It was the most destructive wildfire in California history. (The Dixie Fire that was raging at the time this review was prepared had not yet been controlled, so we do not yet know if it was even worse.) The Camp Fire does not even make the top ten list for the most acres destroyed by fire. That dubious honor goes to the August Complex fire of 2020, which burned over a million acres. The Camp Fire destroyed only 153,336 acres. But in other metrics it leads the way. Almost 19,000 structures were destroyed. The property loss was over $10 billion, (I have seen a report indicating that the cost exceeded $16 billion) about 10 percent larger than the 2017 Tubbs Fire, the former title holder. Most importantly, the official death toll from the Camp Fire was 85, an undercount of at least fifty according to the author’s tally of wrongful death suits lodged against PG&E, and her knowledge of deaths that did not fit into the very restrictive official definition. In looking at lists of the worst wildfires ever, concentrated as it is in the last few years, and with no likelihood that conditions will improve any time soon, it is a certainty that we, as a planet, the USA as a nation, and California in particular are living in a powderkeg and giving off sparks. [image] Lizzy Johnson - Image from her site Johnson had been the fire reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle prior to the Camp Fire. (She has since moved on to the Washington Post) …this book is the product of more than five hundred interviews and nearly five years of full-time wildfire coverage. I even enrolled in a professional firefighting academy to better understand fire…It’s the product of coming to love a community that I embedded in: spending hours strolling across Paradise on my evening walks, buying ice cream sandwiches from the Holiday Market, eating more containers of green curry from Sophia’s Thai than I can count. The people whose lives I’ve chronicled in this book offered me unfettered access to their day-to-day lives without any expectations. They were not compensated for their time. - from Acknowledgments [image] Burned vehicles during Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif. on Thursday, November 8, 2018 - image and text from SF Gate She even stayed with some of them. Johnson provides a wealth of detail. Not just two dimensional, or even three, but adding time into the mix to make for four. We get personal histories of people who were impacted by the fire, specifically in how they came to be there, and the history of the place from before the 1850 goldrush. This includes some history on the Native American Konkow tribe, with lore that addresses the challenges of coping with wildfire. She also looks at PG&E’s history of poor line maintenance, and the legal system’s history of failing to make them pay for their malfeasance or force them to adequately change their ways. [image] Timeline – from the National Institute for Standards and Technology As for the structure of the book, I was reminded of The Longest Day, an epic 1962 war film that told, from a variety of perspectives, the story of the D-Day invasion of Europe in World War II. By knitting the diverse experiences together we get a sense of the overall event that would have been impossible in a more linear Boy-Meets-War type narrative. Paradise is a lot like that. We jump from the desperate bus-driver to the town manager to the maintenance man at the hospital to the pilot trying to dump flame retardant on the blaze, to the people on their off-road vehicles trying to find a location in which to shelter that had no combustible foliage, to the police chief, to the town manager, to the fire chiefs, to a woman who gave birth by Caesarian section that very day, and winds up being driven around by a stranger, trying to find her husband and a way out. and on. But somehow, the book never felt disjointed. Each person is given sufficient detail. We get to know them some, not too much, but enough to care. And we track their progress over that terrible day. I found it helpful while reading to have a browser tab open to a Google map of Paradise so I could follow each person on their fraught peregrinations. Johnson tracks the progress of the fire, from its ignition by the downed power line at 6:15 am on November 8, 2018, step by step. She tracks her residents through that day to where they are now, in August 2020. [image] Fire tornado explainer - from the San Francisco Chronicle Johnson’s focus is on the personal. There is a reason for that. Early in her fire reporting, Johnson noticed that many fire stories—hers included—sounded similar; they often relied on the same beats, the same kinds of quotes, the same tropes. (A woman who left her wedding ring at home, for example, only for it to burn.) Johnson began to wonder if disaster fatigue happened when stories felt predictable. So she changed her approach to make the fire secondary, a “supporting character” in a more surprising and nuanced human story—and readers paid attention. Too often, she said, coverage tries to hit people over the head with a “climate change caused this” moral. “I’m now thinking more like, What does climate change feel like? If we changed the model, maybe people will listen more, and we can do more work with our storytelling. - from the Columbia Journalism Review interviewOne can only hope. [image] The Camp Fire burns in the hills on November 10, 2018 near Big Bend, California. Fueled by high winds and low humidity the Camp Fire ripped through the town of Paradise - image from SF Gate Simple human error accounts for some of the carnage. A public emergency warning system failed to reach half the residents because it had never been tested locally, and a systems flaw had not been detected. And our old bugaboo of inadequate communication and coordination among the responsible emergency authorities was not helpful. In the larger context, it is the myopic focus on immediate financial or political motives that has created much of this problem. For example, a Code Red system for alerting people of an emergency is privately owned, requiring people to subscribe. Only 11% did. [image] from the Camp Fire - image from Cal Fire Maybe, after a four-lane road had been paved on the western edge of town several years before, cutting two lanes from the Skyway, providing extra parking for downtown businesses and removing the “expressway” feel of the road, ignoring pleas that this would be a deadly choice the next time a major fire hit, might, just might have been an incredibly bad, short-term decision with deadly long-term consequences. Someone in Paradise should be nominated for the Larry Vaughn Award for exceptional short-sightedness in the face of mortal peril. [image] NASA shot of the fire The experience of reading this book was unlike that of anything else I have read in recent memory. The closest I can think of is Five Days at Memorial, several years back. How quickly, how easily our civilization can be overwhelmed, our safety completely compromised. [image] Evacuating the hospital - image from The Daily Mail There were moments when I had to step away from reading, and just breathe, because the specifics of the fire were so upsetting. The stories Johnson tells are heart-wrenching, and often horrifying. It was like reading a real-life end-times, zombie-apocalypse novel. Someone hiding from the flames under a vehicle, pokes a hole in a tire just to get breathable air. After a victim of the fire is lifted from a flat surface, a layer of molten flesh remained. Just writing these words brings a sob. [image] A Cal Fire pilot maneuver's an S2-T tanker to make a drop on the Walbridge fire at sunset near Healdsburg, Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2020. - Image from the Press Democrat – photo credit Kent Porter – What it would have looked like had planes not been called back due to 70 mph winds and horrific down and updrafts Another part of the experience was learning new things, many of them dire, like the fact that trees were becoming so hot that the water and sap inside them heated to a point where they basically exploded. Things like the temperature becoming so high that metallic elements in the ground solidified into shards, and propane tanks became missiles and major sources of shrapnel. AT&T’s landlines melted. Internet service cut out as communications hardware on towers was destroyed. Things like the underground pipes carrying the town’s water becoming so hot that they melted, leaching carcinogenic materials into the water supply. (Repair/replace cost $50 million.) Things like the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere from this one fire matched the output of the entire state’s factories and traffic in a week. Things like the incineration of so many structures created clouds of toxic sub-2.5 micron particles that lodge in the lungs of any breathing thing. There are plenty more things to be learned here, not all of them quite so extreme. But all of them worth knowing. She looks at the topography, and how that impacts wind currents, the changes in the local flora, the psychology of disaster response. The scientific explanations in the book were clear and informative [image] Firefighter Jose Corona monitors a burning home as the Camp Fire burns - image and text from SF Gate It is easy to engage with the folks Johnson profiles, and root for them to survive. It helps that we can presume that all of the primary actors here make it out, else Johnson would not have been able to interview them, and we would not be reading their stories. But she succeeds in showing us what global warming means on the ground, to actual human beings, over 125 of whom are no longer with us, and many of whom have been scarred, physically and or emotionally, for life. [image] shot from the fire – image from The Daily Mail There is very little mention of political party here. Local representation is heavily Republican. Everyone burns at the same temperature, but maybe voting for the party of climate change denial while living in a tinderbox might be seen as somehow ironic, if not feckless and arrogant. Trump popped by for a photo op and a chance to blame Californians for the fire, claiming that they should have been raking out the leaves in the woods. (The largest wildland property owner in California is the federal government, by the way. The state is in charge of about 3% of it.) The town voted for him in 2016, but by 2020 had seen quite enough orange light and switched, at least at the presidential level. [image] Sheriffs yell to drivers to evacuate the area off of Pentz Road during the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, on Thursday, Nov. 8, 2018 - image and text from SF Gate As this book and countless other reports make clear, we have a wildfire problem. Serious research into the causes, both global and local, has been done. More is ongoing, and there will, for sure, be more ahead. Even more than has already been done, public policies will have to be crafted to encourage, and where possible, mandate best practices, and enforce restrictions on private and public use of land in the wildland-urban interface. There are many facets to this, from power line protection, roadway construction, widening, or even closing, development requirements, such as mandating fire-safe materials for new construction, and supporting retrofitting older buildings. Communications among first responders has been improved, but much remains to be done. Total deregulation, allowing property owners to do whatever they want with their property can very concretely endanger the property and lives of all those around them. We have an obligation to each other to not be totally indifferent about the safety of our communities and neighbors. Common sense regulation should be implemented. In the wider view, gaining new knowledge of areas that are likely to burn should inform policy on where new development is allowed at all, where further development should be halted, and where rebuilding burned areas is ill-advised. ( Between 1970 and 1999, 94 percent of the roughly three thousand houses destroyed by wildfires in California had been rebuilt in the same spot—and often burned down a second or third time.) Your freedom to do whatever the frack you want ends where my charred skin begins. Insurance companies, with the most to lose financially, have already made getting fire insurance tougher, if it is available at all, in fire-prone communities. [image] Cars escape the Camp Fire as they drive south on Pentz Road in Paradise, California, on Thursday, Nov. 8, 2018 - image and text from SF Gate I love this book. It is among my favorites for the year. I have much praise to offer and very few gripes. While I understand that the author’s intent was to make global warming on-the-street real, and appreciate that she has succeeded in doing just that, I would have liked a bit more on the long-term medical impact of wildfires, and the politics of the local public officials, particularly their views on global warming. [image] A bulldozer dislodged abandoned vehicles from a blocked roadway after the fire. The scene suggests that a burnover, a dangerous event where fire cuts evacuees off from escape routes, took place. There were at least 19 over the course of the fire. – image and text from National Institute for Standards and Technology Trade paperback - August 16, 2022 ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below. As of August 2021, GR will no longer allow external links in comments, so, if you want to see the entire review in one place please head on over to my site, Coot's Reviews. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Aug 02, 2021
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Aug 09, 2021
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Aug 02, 2021
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Hardcover
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1250247136
| 9781250247131
| 1250247136
| 4.06
| 3,164
| Apr 20, 2021
| Apr 20, 2021
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really liked it
| Daniel Boone had always despised, and would for the rest of his life, his outsize reputation as an Indian fighter. He maintained that dealing with Daniel Boone had always despised, and would for the rest of his life, his outsize reputation as an Indian fighter. He maintained that dealing with belligerent Native Americans, whether via combat or negotiation, was for the most part a matter of luck and instinct. His rescue by Simon Kenton was evidence of the former, his quick thinking on the Licking River, the latter. He was vastly more proud of his ability to endure the burdens of a huntsman’s life with a seemingly preternatural stoicism. Now, it was as if the patience he had honed over a lifetime of stalking game through the deep woods was in anticipation of this moment. He would need that gift in the coming months.When I was a kid, one of my favorite possessions was a bona fide, official Davy Crockett coonskin cap. No actual raccoons suffered to create that bit of headgear. Disney had made several live-action films in the 1950s (TV mini-series’ really) celebrating Davey Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. Crockett may have actually worn one that wild creatures suffered to provide. Daniel Boone preferred beaver hats. Although Crockett and Boone were born a half-century apart their deaths were separated by a mere sixteen years. But to young TV viewers in the 1950s the two seemed inseparable, played on the screen by the same actor, Fess Parker, wearing pretty much the same costumes, no doubt saving Disney some wardrobe expenses. [image] Fess Parker - image from the California Wine Club The memories I retain of the shows are much-faded, but I doubt much has been lost. Civilized American good guy frontiersmen (Crockett) or pioneer (Boone) doing battle with hostile indigenous residents, and battling corruption among his own people. Standard TV fodder of the 1950s and early 1960s, with the usual doses of humble wisdom, and little mention made of the genocide that was being foisted on sundry North American native peoples. [image] Bob Drury - image from Macmillan It was the chance to fill that cavernous memory hole with some actual information, on at least one of Fess Parker’s greatest roles, that drew me to Blood and Treasure. On finishing the book, it was possible to drop a coin into that chasm and hear it hit bottom, after a reasonable wait, much better than hearing nothing prior. [image] Tom Clavin - image from The Southampton Press There is history and there is Boone. It is the information on both that is of great value here. Those of my generation at least know the name Daniel Boone, even if our image of him may have been the product of Disneyfication. I expect there are many, born later, to whom the name Boone is likelier to summon images of a baseball figure, a town or city by that name, or a brand of sickly alcoholic beverage. He was a fascinating real-world character, whatever hat he chose to wear. The authors report in the C-Span interview that, unlike Parker’s cinema-friendly 6’5”, Daniel Boone was actually 5’7” or 5’8,” a typical height for a man of his times. He had several cousins, however who were over six feet and Boone was concerned that a raccoon skin cap would make him look even smaller. He favored a felt hunter’s hat that was made of beaver. [image] A child’s “Davy Crockett” hat – image from the Smithsonian The character himself is fascinating, presenting both as a man of his era, and a person with some 21st century sensibilities. Daniel Boone was born in what is now Berks County, Pennsylvania, in 1734, the 6th of eleven children, to Quaker immigrants from England and Wales. The family ran afoul of local public opinion when one of their children married outside the religion, while visibly pregnant. When another, Boone’s brother, Israel, also married outside the faith, and dad stood by him, Pop was excommunicated. Daniel stayed away from the church after that. Three years later the family moved to North Carolina. While Boone carried a bible with him on his long hunts, considered himself a Christian and had all his children baptized, he was not exactly a bible thumper. He was open to other ways of viewing the world. This willingness to learn would serve him well. Boone was fascinated by and respectful of Indian ways as a kid. He spent considerable time with Native Americans, studying their culture, and learning their woodland hunting, tracking, and survival skills. He learned the birdsongs of local avian life, studied the use of plants for medicinal purposes, learned Indian crafts. He was a proficient enough hunter that by age twelve he was providing game meat for his family. His gift for frontier life was clear very early on. In a way he was a frontiersman savant, like those 7-year-olds who play Rachmaninoff as if it’s no big deal. By fifteen he was considered the finest hunter in the area. [image] Daniel Boone by Alonzo Chappel – circa 1861 - From the National Portrait Gallery, via Wikimedia He had considerable respect for his wife, Rebecca, maintaining impressive wisdom about their relationship. After he had been away on a long hunt, for a year, for example, he returned home to be presented with a new daughter. He could count high enough to figure that the child was not his. Rebecca told him that she had thought he was dead (not an unlikely excuse at the time) and had fallen for someone who looked very much like Daniel, his younger brother. Daniel coped, noting with an impressive sense of humor that he had married a full-blooded woman, not a portrait of a saint, raised the girl as his own, and was grateful that Rebecca had at least kept it in the family. He confronts many personal challenges over the years, losing several children (he and Rebecca had ten) to illness or Indian attacks. The book opens with the torture and murder of his teenage son, James. He is called on time and time again to work with militia or government military units. He served with the British in their conflict with their French rivals for North American influence. He was a part of many of the conflicts that took part in the western colonial lands in the late 18th century. I had not heard of any of these. Drury and Clavin point out their often very surprising significance. Boone was not initially cast to star in this novel. Drury and Clavin, with more than a few history book pelts in their saddlebags, had written about the wars waged on the plains Indians, many of whom had been pushed west by the advancing white invaders, and wanted to trace that process back. The book covers, roughly, the period from the 1730s,when Boone was born, to 1799, when he moved his family west to Missouri. The book was supposed to be about how the Indians had been driven out of the land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. In doing their research, however, Boone kept turning up, a Zelig-like character, involved in many of the seminal events of his time. Served with a British regiment? Check. Served with George Washington? Check. Developed the primary trail through the Cumberland Gap? You betcha. He even established a town that would be named after him, Boonesborough, and led the defense of a western fort, the loss of which might have changed the outcome of the American Revolution. The man really was a legend in his own time. A natural leader, he partook of many of the important battles that occurred between settlers, through their militias and their English backers, and both the native people they were attempting to displace and their French allies. He functioned as a diplomat as well, respected by many of the Indians and seen as a man of his word, not a common attribute at the time. And so he became the narrative thread that pulled together a large number of related, but disconnected parts. The frontier in the 18th century was the Appalachian Mountains. The Wild, Wild West was the land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. The English had entered into treaties with Indian tribes that basically drew a line there. We will allow our colonists to advance only so far, and no farther. The colonists, however, were more than happy to roll their eyes, mutter a “whatever” or the 18th century equivalent, and continue pushing westward, making life difficult for just about everyone. I was reminded of contemporary settlers, eager to occupy land outside their legal realm. At least some of this westward movement was driven by land speculation, including by some founding father sorts. I know it is tough to believe that real-estate developers might be anything other than sober, law-abiding capitalists, but, like the poor, it appears that we will always have them with us. Drury and Clavin offer a look at the diverse tribes that occupied the areas in conflict, showing differences among them. One particularly horrifying episode involved a group of Indians who had converted to the Moravian faith, a sect of Christianity. They were pacifists, took up no arms, but were slaughtered anyway by a group of American Rangers in what became known as the Moravian Massacre, a shameful episode, widely talked about at the time. We also see leaders of one tribe, in negotiations, willingly ceding land to their white counterparts, when they, in fact, had no hold over that land at all. I was reminded of the contemporary situation in Afghanistan, among other places, where tribal allegiances easily trump larger national demands. Many of the most effective, and memorable of Indian leaders are shown, impressive in their tactical leadership, creativity, and tenacity. The American Revolution was more an eastern than western conflict, but there were times when battles on the western frontier might have determined a different outcome to the colonial attempt to separate from the motherland. These were mostly, no, they were entirely, news to me. It is in learning about so many of these turning points that the value of the book is most manifest. If, like me, your knowledge of American history has been shaped primarily by what we learned in grade school, high school, and college, and absorbed from popular culture, you will get a very strong sense of just how much we do not know, and had never suspected. In a way, it was like opening up the back of a mechanical watch and seeing all the intricate gears at work, impacting each other to produce the simple result of indicating the time of day. Getting there is not so simple. Nor is truly appreciating how 21st century America came to be what it is today. This book offers an up-close look at some of those gears. My reading experience of this book was wildly divergent. I found it to be a very difficult read for the first half, at least, dragging myself through anywhere from ten to thirty pages a day for what seemed forever. Even then, I recognized that there was a lot of valuable information to be absorbed, so stuck with it. It is true that there are a lot of characters passing through these pages, a bounty of place names, a plethora of battles, skirmishes, and conflicts that were significant and interesting. But it felt so overwhelming that the TMI sirens were blaring repeatedly. But at a certain point, some of the characters, through repeated appearance, became recognizable. Oh, yeah, I remember him now. Wasn’t he the one who…? Yep, that’s the guy. At a certain point it was not a duty to return to the book, fulfilling a felt obligation, trying to learn something, but a joy. Quite a switch, I know. But as I read the latter half of the book, it became clear that this was not just a rich history book, but quite an amazing adventure story, a saga, filled with deeds heroic and dastardly. There are many compelling characters in these pages, and so many ripping yarns that reading this became like sailing through something by George R. R. Martin. Taking the analogy to the next step, I have zero doubt that, with the many compelling narratives at play in this book, it would make a fantastic GoT-level TV series. It certainly has the blood and gore to play at that level, the territorial rivalries, the vanity, backstabbing, the double-dealing, the battles, sieges, murders, tortures and war crimes, but also the underlying content to give it all a lot more heft. This is how nations are created. This is how they grow. These are the people who paid the price for that creation. These are the decisions that were made, the promises broken and kept, the lies told, the excuses offered. Sorry, no dragons, or other mythical beasts, but there is, at the core, a bona fide legend. (James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans was inspired by Boone rescuing his kidnapped daughter, Jemima) Thankfully, it will require no blood for you to check this one out, and only a modest amount of treasure. Like the Cherokee, the tribes north of the Ohio River strongly suspected that America’s War for Independence was being fought over Indian land despite high-minded slogans about taxation without representation. It was the Shawnee who recognized the earliest that this internecine conflict among the whites could only end badly for the tribe should the rapacious colonists prevail. Native American support of the Crown, in essence, was the lesser of two evils. It was not the British, after all, who had begun desecrating Kanta-ke with cabins and cornfields.Review first posted – May 21, 2021 Publication dates ----------April 20, 2021 - hardcover ----------March 15, 2022 - trade paperback I cross-posted this review on my site, Coots's Review. Stop by, say Hi! I received this book as an e-pub from St Martin’s Press via NetGalley in return for a fair review. No raccoons, beavers, or other wildlife were harmed providing headgear used during the writing of this review. =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to Bob Drury’ personal site, and to Tom Clavin’s personal and FB pages Items of Interest -----C-Span - Interview with Drury and Clavin - video - 50:08 – This one is all you will need -----Gulliver’s Travels - Boone’s favorite book -----National Museum of American History - The saga of Davy Crockett's coonskin cap -----Wiki on the Moravian Massacre -----Wiki for Last of the Mohican -----Gutenberg – full text of Last of the Mohicans ...more |
Notes are private!
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Apr 08, 2021
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May 08, 2021
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May 17, 2021
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Hardcover
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0062938355
| 9780062938350
| 3.79
| 2,697
| Jan 19, 2021
| Jan 19, 2021
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it was amazing
| This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weav This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. - from Chief Sealth’s letter to President Pierce on a treaty giving much of what is now Washington state over for white settlementWhat are the three most important things in real estate? All together now, “Location, location, location.” Simon Winchester, in his usual way, has offered us a grand tour of land, and thus real estate on our planet. Note the subtitle, How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World). This is not the broker’s walk-through in which the good elements are highlighted while the less appealing aspects are minimized or ignored. It may be that location is the most important property of land, but there are other features that are worth knowing too. Things like How much land is there? How do we know? How was it measured, by whom, and why? Is the amount of land fixed? Can it increase or decrease? Can land be made unusable? Where is everything? Who can make use of it? Is land inherently public, for (reasonable) use by all? Was it ever? How did it come to be private? How do different cultures think about land? Why is land divided up the way it is, into public and private, into parcels of particular size? Who gets to own land, and who is relegated to merely renting it? Winchester has answers. Land is the defining characteristic of every nation. Our (the USA’s) national anthem, for example, goes "O'er the land of the free" not o’er the pond, lake, river or fjord of the free, (and no, Norway's anthem makes no specific mention of fjords), not the sweet air of the free, not the great views of the free (although “spacious skies” and "purple mountain majesties" from our other national anthem, America the Beautiful, comes close), but the land. Check your nation of choice for common ground re this. (Click for a list of anthems) The word "land" figures prominently Although I suggest you check out the Algerian lyrics. Dude, switch to decaf. The war is over. Land is seminal in human culture as well as national history. For many of us in the West, our very origin story begins with a landlord-tenant dispute. “If we owned the garden instead of renting it, Adam, I could have eaten the goddam apple and it would have been nobody’s business but my own. And we wouldn’t have to put up with the creepy landlord spying on us all the time, or his freaky feathered bouncer. The guy should get a hobby, make some friends or something.” [image] Simon Winchester at home in his study in the Berkshires – image from The Berkshire Eagle - Photo: Andrew Blechman This is the eighth Winchester I have read, of his fifteen non-fiction books (so, plenty left to get to) and they have all been engaging, informative, and charming. He read Geology at Oxford, so, has a particular soft spot for explaining how physical things on our planet came to be where they are, how they changed over time, and why they exist in the forms they have taken on. You might be interested in the Atlantic Ocean, maybe the Pacific? Winchester has written a book on each. How about looking at the creation of the world’s first geological map, or maybe why Krakatoa blew its top. He is also interested in tracing back how we know what we know, (or, um, history) as a crucial element of understanding things as they are now, and how they came to be. The Perfectionists looks at how industrial standardization developed, and how machine tolerances improved to the point where they are beyond the control of flesh and blood humans. In The Professor and the Madman he looks at how the Oxford English Dictionary was made. The third element in Winchester’s trifecta of interest is people, often odd personalities who played pivotal roles in the development of technical and intellectual advances, thus expanding and deepening human understanding of the world. I think what I’ve done is to get obscure figures from history and tell the stories like I’ve told you about Mister Penck and his maps, Mister Struve and his survey, Mister Radcliffe and his line, and turn them into what they truly are, which is heroic, forgotten figures from history….I just become fascinated by these characters. - from the Kinukinaya interviewThere are plenty of interesting sorts in Land. Maybe none of the folks noted here are quite so interesting as the institutionalized murderer in The Professor and the Madman, but they are still a colorful crew, and it is clear Winchester had fun writing about them. They include Cornelius Lely, who built the 20-mile-long Barrier Dam in The Netherlands, which turned the Zuider Zee into vast tracts of arable land, Gina Rinehart, the world’s largest private landholder, not someone who has contributed nearly so much to the store of human knowledge as she has to conservative politicians, and Friedrich Wilhelm Georg von Struve, who spent forty years measuring a meridian for the tsar of Russia. There are many more, of both the benign and dark variety. When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land. -- Desmond TutuThere are surprising connections made, such as the relationship between the invention of barbed wire and America’s appetite for beef. Or the link between the growth of commercial aviation and the development of World Aeronautical Charts, well maybe not so surprising, that. But that such things did not exist prior to people flying the friendly skies reminds us just how recent so much of the foundation of today’s world truly is. I suppose it also might not count as surprising, but John Maynard Keynes had an interesting solution to the problem of landed gentry, euthanasia. Winchester details many of the outrages that have been inflicted, in the name of seizing land, on indigenous people across the planet, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA figuring large in these. But there are also plenty of other people who have been expelled from their homes, livelihoods, and history by the forces of greed across the planet. These include immigrants to the USA whose land was stolen while they were illegally incarcerated, and farmers who were dispossessed by land-owners seeking to maximize the profitability of their holdings, via the Enclosure and Clearance laws passed in England and Scotland. Then there are the perennial turf battles, like those in Ireland and the Middle East. Gripes are, per usual with any Winchester book, minimal. He writes about the role, historical, current, and potential, that trusts have, had, and might have for the preservation of land from destructive exploitation. Yet, in doing so, there was no mention of The Nature Conservancy. Their motto could be (it isn’t) We save land the old-fashioned way. We buy it. It has over a million members (yes, I am) and has protected about 120 million acres of land. It definitely merited a shoutout here. Another part of the book tells of the annihilation of bison from the American west. The critters are referred to as multi-ton. Like the mythical eight hundred pound gorilla which grows only to about 400 pounds at most, bison max out at roughly 2,000 pounds, or a single ton, which still leaves them as the largest land mammal in North America. Like any good geologist, or writer, Simon Winchester enjoys digging. And we are all the lucky recipients of the informational nuggets he unearths. He is a master story-teller, and if you are ever fortunate enough to find yourself at a party with him, or find a chance to see him speak publicly, just pull up a seat and listen. You won’t be sorry. So, I can tell from the looks on your faces that this one would be a perfect fit for you, particularly if you are planning to start a library soon. Do you think you’d like to make an offer on the book? There are other potential buyers stopping by this afternoon, and I would hate for you to miss out. It won’t stay on the shelves very long. Take my card and give me a ring when you make up your mind, ok. But I can assure you that, whether your preferences for land are LaLa, Never, Sugar, Holy, Promised, Wonder, Native, or Rover, when you check out Simon Winchester’s latest book, you will be a Land lover. We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. - Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (1948)(view spoiler)[I could say that Winchester covered a lot of ground in this book, but really who would write such a thing? I suppose one might say that he planted a flag on his subject matter and claimed it for his own, and if you don’t like it, you can get the hell off his lawn. Not me. Nope. Nosiree. (hide spoiler)] Review first posted – February 5, 2021 Publication dates ----------January 19, 2021 - hardcover ----------January 18, 2022- trade paperback [image] [image] [image] [image] =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages A nice overview of Winchester’s professional life can be found here Interviews -----Kinokuniya USA - Interview with Simon Winchester on 'Land' - video - 30:03 – by Raphael - This is wonderful. The interview is a lot like SW’s books, one fascinating story follows another follows another. -----RNZ - Simon Winchester: how land ownership shaped the modern world by Kim Hill – text extract plus audio interview - 48:24 -----The Book Club - Simon Winchester: Land - audio - 42:46 Songs/Music -----Woody Guthrie - This Land is Your Land -----The Lion King - This Land ----- LaLa Land - soundtrack Reviews of other Simon Winchester books we have read: -----2018 - The Perfectionists -----2015 - Pacific -----2010 - Atlantic -----2008 - The Man Who Loved China -----2005 - Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded -----2001 - The Map That Changed the World -----1998 - The Professor and the Madman Items of Interest – by Winchester -----From 2013 - Simon Winchester at TEDxEast re his book The Men Who United the States – There is an interesting morsel here about 11 minutes in on an important Jeffersonian decision having to do with land ownership -----American Scholar - Experience Everything Items of Interest ----- Citizen Simon: Author, journalist, OBE, sage of Sandisfield by Andrew D. Blechman - Posted on September 9, 2018 -----International Map of the World -----The Nature Conservancy An extra bit. I had intended to incorporate the following into the body of the review, but just felt off about that. Nevertheless I do hold with the notion expressed, so here it is, tucked away at the bottom: I was taken with a particular instance of the horrors that accompanied land grabs in the expanding USA, as having resonance with today, with Donald Trump as the embodiment of that carnage. Whereas the racist yahoos of the 19th century westward expansion delighted in slaughtering bison from a moving train, in order to deny the native residents a living and to make it easier to clear them from desired land, so Trump has spent his time in the limelight, and in power, blasting away at the things that are central to our culture, to our values, so that he could deny us our cultural and legal core, as he seized all he could grab for himself and those like him. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jan 04, 2021
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Feb 03, 2021
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Jan 04, 2021
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ebook
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1538746832
| 9781538746837
| 1538746832
| 3.73
| 12,330
| Nov 10, 2020
| Nov 10, 2020
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it was amazing
| I’m here because, for the past ten years. I have been haunted by a murder that took place a few steps away. It was told to me my junior year of col I’m here because, for the past ten years. I have been haunted by a murder that took place a few steps away. It was told to me my junior year of college like a ghost story: a young woman, a Harvard graduate student of archaeology, was bludgeoned to death in her off-campus apartment in January 1969. Her body was covered with fur blankets and the killer threw red ochre on her body, a perfect recreation of a burial ritual. No one heard any screams; nothing was stolen. Decades passed, and her case remained unsolved. Unsolved, that is, until yesterday.------------------------------------- “Every nation-state wants an important past,” Karl said. So, often the ruling parties will commission archaeologists. But sometimes the past the archaeologists find is not what the powers want them to find.In Becky Cooper’s gripping true-crime tale, We Keep the Dead Close, there are two mysteries at work. Who brutally murdered Jane Britton and why, and was Harvard University involved in covering up the murder? If so, did they know who the guilty party was? [image] Becky Cooper – from the Boston Globe – photo by Becky Cooper Ok, so here is how I went about reading the book. In addition to entering into my review file the names of the Questions so far -----Was Jim H (Jane’s sort-of bf) at her door at 9a as reported by her friends and neighbors, the Mitchells? -----Where is Jim H now? -----Who were the two men dashing to a car at 12:30a as reported by neighbor Ravi? -----Why was Jane’s cat screaming at 8p, and if the place was effectively soundproof how did neighbor Carol Presser hear it? -----Sounds like the killer was left-handed, given the location of the fatal blow. -----What’s the deal with the red ochre sprinkled over Jane’s body? [image] Jane Britton – image from Wikimedia I kept a separate list for the question of whether Harvard engaged in a coverup. In a book of over 400 pages you can see how this list might grow. And grow it did, even as I checked off many of the questions when they were answered. But that was one of the major joys of reading this, or, I guess, any true crime book, or fictional crime book for that matter. Seeing if what strikes the author, or the investigators, is also what strikes you, the reader, the rousing of our inner Sherlock. Aside from the mystery, the whodunit of the story, there is content in abundance. For example, how can an institution like Harvard at the very least appear to be involved in covering up a crime, and yet remain unaccountable. Maybe that is not so surprising given that, after lives of diverse forms of crime, the Trump family remains on the spacious side of prison bars. But still, there is, or at least should be, some shock value to this. Did Harvard leadership hide a capital crime, did Harvard obstruct justice for fifty years? Cooper looks at evidence suggesting that it did. [image] Professor Karl Lamberg-Karlovsky was a prime suspect in Britton’s murder – image from the NY Post – grad students had accumulated a file on him. One of them died under questionable circumstances. As noted in the opening quote at top, Cooper had come across this story while an undergraduate at Radcliffe. The professor presumed most likely to have done the deed was still teaching at Harvard. Cooper graduated, moved on, was having a life, but the story stuck with her. Ten years after her undergrad days, she returned to the scene of the crime, as a graduate student, determined to find out the truth of Jane Britton’s death. [image] The Dig team in Iran in 1968 - from West Hunter This is a journey very reminiscent of Michelle McNamara’s amazing I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, in which she helped track down the Golden State Killer. Could Cooper do the same? We follow her through the labyrinth of her investigation, talking with everyone who knew Jane at the time of her death, and then branching out to the people who knew the people who knew her. She keeps trying to get access to official police records, a remarkably difficult undertaking for such a cold case, even moreso as Massachusetts is one of the worst states in the nation on Freedom of Information access, and gets in touch with local and state investigators who were involved back then. Suspects get their time in the spotlight, then are replaced with others. Was it one of these, or maybe someone in Jane’s circle who was never thought of as a suspect, or maybe someone else entirely? [image] Jane Britton and Ed Franquemont at their college graduation in 1967 - image from Town & Country – source: the Jane Britton Police File – Franquemont, an ex, was universally disliked by Jane’s friends. He may have been physically abusive to her But there is a whole lot more going on here than a procedural effort to unearth the truth in a nearly fifty-year-old cold case. There is a consideration of historical and all-too-contemporary gender discrimination issues at Harvard, a strong thread about story that permeates, and a subset of that, on rumor as a means of social control. Cooper documents decades of dismissive treatment of women, not just at Harvard, but in academia well beyond those ivied walls. This manifests in many ways. Women at Harvard in the 1970s learned to dress as sexlessly as possible in order to de-emphasize their gender, lest they be seen as less academically capable than their male clasamates. In the 1980s, women were ushered to positions in the university that were high on administrative duties and low in departmental influence. In 1994 Nancy Hopkins documented the bias against women, showing that only 8 percent of the science faculty at MIT were women, and even lower, 5 percent, at Harvard. In 2005 Hopkins confronted then Harvard president Larry Summers at a conference when he claimed that female under-representation in science faculties was the result of innate biological differences. In the twenty-teens, Associate Professor Kimberly Theidon, was active at Harvard speaking out about sex discrimination and sexual assault, faulting Harvard for its lagging sexual assault policy. When her concerns made it into The Crimson, Harvard’s newspaper, her tenure application, which had already been approved by the authorizing committee, was withdrawn. Behind-closed-door deliberations on tenure decisions shields Harvard from much-needed transparency. The tenure decision-making process “is an invitation to abuse,” Howard Georgi, a Harvard physicist who has served on tenure committees told Science magazine in 1999. “There’s no question this has affected women.”The whole notion for the book began, of course, with the story BC heard when she was a Radcliffe undergrad. The police withholding their information made the story of Jane’s death largely oral, and certainly unofficial. And we know from the game Telephone, how stories can change when passed along that way. The file kept by graduate students at Harvard about Karl, with so many elements poorly examined, if researched at all, made that a kind of urban legend. Everybody back at the time of her death had their own experience of Jane and BC tries to make sense of them, learn from their Rashomon-like views the truth of who Jane was. She presents to us a Jane Britton who is not just a body deprived of life, but a three-dimensional person, with a personality, a history, hopes, talents, complications, and ambitions. [image] Jane Britton’s boyfriend, Jim Humphries, was also a possible suspect. – image from the NY Post - source: Jane Britton police file We construct history from the pieces that are available to us. Artifacts, physical objects, letters, photographs, newspaper reports, police reports, spaces that existed then that are still around today. Cooper pursues all she can find, but some will never be unearthed. Sometimes those pieces might lead in opposing directions. Sometimes the pieces might lead nowhere. Sometimes small pieces might hold large truths. Sometimes what seem large pieces hold little explanatory value. Which are the important shards? And which are just detritus? It takes persistence, sensitivity, intelligence, and creativity to make the story we construct of these pieces reflect the truth of the person, the event, or the time we are attempting to describe. Karl Lamberg-Karlovsky’s claim to fame, for example, was not the high academic achievement of his field research. It was his ability to transform the bits he found into a compelling tale. And what about the missing puzzle pieces, the police reports that were kept hidden, the people there in 1968 and 1969 who had died? We can never really know all there is to know. But hopefully we can, with the evidence we are able to gather, get close enough. [image] Richard Michael (Mike) Gramly (many years later, obviously) not only knew Jane at the time of her death, but was also on an expedition when another young woman vanished mysteriously – he was known to have serious anger issues There were rumors bouncing around Jane and her death like neutrons in a nuclear reactor. Many of the people with whom Cooper spoke had a favorite suspect they believed guilty of the crime, offering what they knew or, maybe, had heard or suspected as supporting evidence. Did Ed Franquemont beat her? Was Mike Gramly guilty of maybe two killings? Did Jane have an affair with Karl in Iran? Did Jane threaten to expose a professional lie Karl had told? Did she blackmail him to gain an advantage in her exams, and a place on the next dig? Was Karl a plagiarist? Was Karl a murderer? Did rumors surround him because of his arrogance or because he might be guilty? How about Lee Parsons [sorry, I was unable to find a photo, but Lee is a prime suspect]? Something happened between Lee and Jane at a notorious “Incense Party” at his place. But what? Did Lee confess to killing Jane many years later? In Cooper’s investigative travels she crosses paths with an expert in such things. As I thought more about [medical anthropologist] Mel [Konner]’s assertion that the rumors were a form of punishment, I found myself reading scholarly work on the social functions of gossip. I eventually worked my way to Chris Boehm, a former classmate of Jane’s who’s studied how gossip works in small-scale societies. He had, in fact, used Jane’s murder as an example in his paper about gossip as a form of social control.There is so much going on here, and it is so accessibly presented that you will be rewarded with much more than the knowledge of who killed Jane Britton. You will learn a lot about Harvard, how academia treats women, how gossip works in the world, and how one might go about solving a very cold case. You may or may not want to read this book in the somewhat OCD manner I pursued, focusing on solving the mystery. That way does add considerably to the reading time, as well as the filling feeling one gets from such activities. But whether you dust off each piece of information as it emerges, or speed through Cooper’s excavation on a mud-spattered Jeep, you will be well rewarded. Once you dig out We Keep the Dead Close from your bookseller’s shelves, you will definitely want to keep it close until you finish reading, exploring, and learning. This is an expedition well worth signing up for. …the act of interpretation molds the facts in service of the storyteller. I have been burned enough times to know. There are no true stories; there are only facts, and the stories we tell ourselves about those facts. Review posted – January 8, 2021 Publication dates ----------November 10, 2020 - hardcover ----------September 14, 2021 - trade paperback I received a copy of the book from Grand Central in return for an honest review, or at least, as honest a review as might be possible given the materials I was able to excavate. Thanks, folks. And thanks to MC. You know who you are. You can find the entire, un-chopped-up review on my site, Coot's Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below. [image] ...more |
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it was amazing
| As my father lay dying, Donald went to the movies. If he can in any way profit from your death, he’ll facilitate it, and then he’ll ignore the fact As my father lay dying, Donald went to the movies. If he can in any way profit from your death, he’ll facilitate it, and then he’ll ignore the fact that you died.So, you think your family’s nuts? Usually we have to wait for historians to delve back through the years of a president’s life, digging through letters and writings, interviewing any who might have interacted with them, checking their letters and writings, to cull relevant bits, suss out impactful events, discern motivations and understand how that president came to make the decisions he (still only he) made. Also, sift fact from spin or worse in former presidents’ memoirs and other writings [image] Mary Trump - image from Inside Edition It is quite likely that Donald Trump may be the most written about person, let alone politician, in modern American history. And despite his attempts, many of them, sadly, all too successful, to protect his information from the world, (still waiting on those tax returns) there are so many eyes looking his way, so many searchlights in the darkness, that details continue to emerge, daily, it seems. But there are few who have the sort of access available to a family member. Reporters and historians did not have the personal experiences of dealing with him in a household setting. His remaining siblings have their own reasons to keep their counsel, despite the odd secretly-taped statement that finds its way to the public arena. But we have something pretty close, if a generation removed. Not a sibling, but Donald’s niece, Mary Trump, daughter of the eldest of Fred Trump’s children, Freddy. She is not only a family member but a clinical psychologist to boot. While she was not present when Donald was a child, (he was 19 when she was born) she was as familiar as one could be with family who had been, and had personal exposure to him all her life, in addition to the many tales she heard from family members of Donald’s earlier days. The stories she tells paint a picture of how Donald came to be the person he is. She does not offer a hard diagnosis on how much might be genetic and how much nurture, but the implication is clear that it was a substantial mix of both. Whereas Mary [Donald’s mother] was needy, Fred [his father] seemed to have no emotional needs at all. In fact, he was a highly-functioning sociopath. Although uncommon, sociopathy is not rare, afflicting as much as 3 percent of the population. Seventy-five percent of those diagnosed are men. Symptoms of sociopathy include a lack of empathy, a facility for lying, an indifference to right and wrong, abusive behavior, and a lack of interest in the rights of others. Having a sociopath as a parent, especially if there is no one else around to mitigate the effects, all but guarantees severe disruption in how children understand themselves, regulate their emotions, and engage with the world.There are better sources for the details of Donald’s lifelong crime spree. What Mary Trump offers is a look into the poisoned tree from which this rotten apple dropped. One thing that stands out is that, even though Fred Sr encouraged all Donald’s worst qualities, there is rarely any sense that Donald had any positive ones beyond a superficial charm. In the Stephanopoulos interview, though, Mary talks about there having once been some kind inclinations in Donald, but they were squashed by his father. Even as a child, he delighted in bullying children smaller than himself, to the extent that Fred was encouraged to take him out of a school on whose board Fred sat. That must have been a fun conversation. Pop relocated Donald to the New York Military Academy, six miles north of West Point, in upstate New York. It was the equivalent of being sent to reform school for rich kids. A lot of the book focuses on Mary’s father, Freddy, the oldest of the siblings, the one expected to take over the business. He presumed he would be the head of his father’s company, but Pop never really gave him a chance, sticking him with relatively menial work. He was a kid who was kind, had friends, and interests other than his father’s business. This got him labeled as weak and a failure. Fred Senior preferred someone with what he considered a “killer” instinct, which translated into being as sociopathic as he was. He offered zero support for Freddy’s interest in flying, even though he had joined the United States Air Force ROTC in college and put in mad hours flying and training. Even after he secured a choice position as a pilot with TWA, the elite airline of the stars, flying their new 707 from Boston to Los Angeles, a pretty big deal at the time, his father regarded him as nothing more than a bus driver in the sky. But even after abandoning his flying career, and crawling back to his father, Fred Sr. never really gave him a chance at gaining any real authority. Donald, the second son, eight years younger, was more than happy to step into the favorite son shoes. He clearly had the temperament, the narcissism and malignant regard for others that his father so wanted to see in a successor. Mary offers some details on the business disasters that Donald wrought, his business talent pretty much as non-existent as his talent for dishonesty and self-promotion was vast. Even Mary bought into the spin for a long time, not realizing that Fred Sr. had been keeping Donald afloat with hundreds of millions in loans and often illegal gifts. It was when Donald asked her to ghostwrite one of his books that she did some actual research into him, followed him around, and realized just what a totally empty suit he truly was. There are plenty of quotes from this book making the rounds, a passel of stories. I will spare you the full list. But there are few things worth noting. ----------Donald’s disregard for women tracks with his father’s disregard for his wife, and even Donald’s dismissive treatment of her. ----------Donald even tried to steal his siblings’ inheritance, a ploy that was only sidetracked because Fred Sr was having a rare lucid day and smelled a rat, when his lawyer, whom Donald had recruited for this will-rewrite task, asked him to sign some papers. It was Donald’s mother who saw to it that the plot was foiled. ----------It is telling to see how Donald has recreated in his role as president the model set by his father for always keeping his children from any feeling of security. ----------He has inherited pop’s complete incapacity and/or unwillingness to accept any responsibility for his actions. But at some point you become responsible for yourself, and it is clear that whether he has the capacity or not, Donald never will. He will remain a spoiled child, a bully, a danger to anyone near him, and now, as someone with the instruments of national power at his disposal, an actual menace to the planet. One of the overarching feelings I had while reading this book was sadness. However awful Donald is today (and has been almost all his life), it is still a very sad thing for anyone to grow up in a household where a father’s love was not only unavailable, but in which even wanting such affection would be considered a sign of weakness, and cause for rejection and humiliation. Add to this a mother whose narcissism combined with physical illness to ensure that their interactions would be all about her, and never about him. Mary’s relationship with her grandmother, Donald’s mother, is also heart-breaking. Materials from the book are all over the print and digital media. The understandable focus there is on the actual content of the book. What happened, where, and when, what was said, by whom? How did Donald become so awful and what awful things has he done or said that we do not yet know about? Usually unmentioned, or maybe noted in passing, is what a bloody good read this book is. I found myself rapt while poring through it, and not just fascinated by the major multi-car pileup that is Donald’s life, but actually moved, particularly by the other main story Mary tells, that of her father’s demise. What a waste of a life, of an opportunity, and at the hands of madness. Trumps are not known for writing their own books. But Mary had an interest rarely, if ever, seen in the Trump family. It was love of books that set her apart when she was growing up… in what she describes as a “shitty Trump apartment” in the gritty housing projects of Jamaica, Queens, quite different to the rarefied air of the nearby Jamaica Estates where the rest of the family lived. That gave her a grounding in reality. She took the subway to school. And she devoured literature. In her memoir, she recounts that her grandfather’s house did not display a single book until her uncle published his ghostwritten The Art of the Deal in the late 1980s. “I started reading when I was three and a half,” Trump says. “My horizons were already broader than anyone else in the family simply by virtue of that.” - from the Financial Times interviewWhile Mary Trump does not have the objectivity of a true outsider looking at the family, that does not mean that she leaves her clinical toolbox unopened. She has a PhD in clinical psychology. She has observed and had reliable reports on a large swath of Donald’s life, and the lives of other family members, a solid grounding for offering a very well-informed, and analytically incisive, opinion about Donald and other family members. Her personal take on 45 is the best we are likely to ever have in terms of understanding the psychological roots and early journey into madness of our Psycho President. It is a frightening picture. We can only hope that we all get to live long enough to fully appreciate just how valuable it is. Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York and currently the de facto leader of the country’s COVID-19 response, has committed not only the sin of insufficiently kissing Donald’s ass, but the ultimate sin of showing Donald up by being better and more competent, a real leader who is respected and effective and admired. Donald can’t fight back by shutting Cuomo up or reversing his decisions; having abdicated his authority to lead a nationwide response, he no longer has the ability to counter decisions made at the state level…What he can do in order to offset the powerlessness and rage he feels is to punish the rest of us. He’ll withhold ventilators or steal supplies from states that have not groveled sufficiently…What Donald thinks is justified retaliation is, in this context, mass murder. Review first posted – September 10, 2020 Publication date – July 14, 2020 [image] [image] [image] [image] =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s Twitter and FB pages Interviews -----ABC News – with George Stephanopoulos - George is a bit hostile, but it is a good interview overall -----Financial Times - Mary Trump: ‘At Least the Borgias supported the arts’ by Edward Luce -----The Guardian - Mary Trump on her Uncle Donald: ‘I used to feel compassion for him. That became impossible’ by David Smith -----Mother Jones - Watch: Mary Trump on Why Donald Trump Lies, Why He’s “Racist,” and Why She Wrote Her Book by David Corn -----MSNBC has chopped up Rachel Maddow’s interview with the author into bits. If I find a complete vid of that interview, I will add it here. Items of Interest -----Wikipedia entry for The Trump Family -----The Lincoln Project - Bloodlines ...more |
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Aug 24, 2020
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Sep 05, 2020
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it was amazing
| For his heroic service, Cher Ami was awarded the French Croix de Guerre with palm. He was returned to the United States and died at Fort Monmouth, N.J For his heroic service, Cher Ami was awarded the French Croix de Guerre with palm. He was returned to the United States and died at Fort Monmouth, N.J. on June 13, 1919, as a result of his wounds. Cher Ami was later inducted into the Racing Pigeon Hall of Fame in 1931, and received a gold medal from the Organized Bodies of American Pigeon Fanciers in recognition of his extraordinary service during World War I. - from the Smithsonian-------------------------------------- …in a contest against passion, truth always makes a poor showing.Two kinds of heroism are on display in Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey. The usual sort is displayed by a homing pigeon, Cher Ami of the title, braving and taking enemy fire to bring news back to base of the dire situation faced by a battalion caught behind enemy lines. The other was the courage Charles Whittlesey, the commander of that battalion, mustered to remain in place when the urge to retreat was almost overwhelming. Movement would have offered no assuredness of survival, and probably would have resulted in annihilation, the other option, surrendering to the surrounding German army, again offered no certainty of survival, but confidently promised the collateral damage of severe disgrace. A very Anthony Fauci decision, selecting the least of the available evils, but Whittlesey chose the one offering the greatest hope for the best results. [image] Kathleen Rooney and friends - image from her site This novel is a fictionalized account of a real-world event. Cher Ami is indeed in the Smithsonian. Charles Whittlesey did lead his men in dire circumstances. The Lost Battalion was a major media event in the waning days of World War I. [image] Cher Ami – image from the Air and Space Museum News coverage at the time had focused on the Metropolitan Division more than most segments of the Army prior to the event. It was made up primarily of New Yorkers, and thus a large contingent of immigrants, some of whom did not even speak English, many of whom were not yet naturalized citizens, draftees fighting for their home country of choice. So, there was much more news sent home about the 77th Division, of which the battalion was a part, than there might have been had the incident afflicted a less reported-on force. You could read all about the plight of The Lost Battalion in the New York papers, and then across the country. One of the main writers covering the story was a reporter for The New York American, a Hearst newspaper. He had a readership, based to a considerable degree on his sports journalism, but he was more than just a sports writer. You may have heard of him. His name was Damon Runyon. [image] Damon Runyon - image from FamousBirthdays.com Whittlesey’s piece of the 77th, part of an Allied offensive into France’s German-occupied Meuse-Argonne Forest in October 1918, did their jobs too well, continuing to advance, even when forces on either side of them had ceased their forward progress, unbeknownst to Whit. It is called a salient when you advance past enemy lines and find yourself surrounded by the enemy on multiple sides. Not a good thing. We get to see Whit’s decisions, and the efforts that had to be made to try to get word back to base, and the herculean task of keeping his soldiers’ spirits up, trying to keep them as safe as possible, countering any enemy moves while meting out diminishing supplies and tamping down those who would welcome capture just to end their awful situation. Each man was the miserable monarch of a kingdom that squirmed with vermin, one that consisted of the dirt and a bit of sky each one could see from the dirt, of their feet in their boots in the mud—a kingdom indistinguishable from a grave.But the battle and the heroism displayed is only one part of the story, albeit a compelling one. [image] Image from Chris Rice Cooper’s blog The periods portrayed are, like all Gaul, divided into three parts, the lead-up before their engagement in the war, wartime duties, and postwar experiences, including the psychological and political processes and actions that radiated from that Lost Battalion event. [image] Image from Chris Rice Cooper’s blogspot This is a tale of two narrators, Charles Whittlesey and the homing pigeon of the title, Cher Ami. Chapters alternate. Do not think that just because we have a pigeon narrating half this book that it is in any way a children’s tale. It most certainly is not. Cher is an amazing character whom Rooney uses to great effect. She has a rich social and emotional life, offers astute observations of human nature and behavior, and teaches us a lot. [image] Image from Chris Rice Cooper’s blogspot We meet her (yes, her, Cher was mis-gendered and named as a male, an error that persisted even into her descriptive display at the Smithsonian) in the present day, inhabiting, as she has for a century, a place of honor in the National Museum of American History in DC. It is from this perch that this highly decorated war hero looks back on her life, the events that led up to her heroic act, and her life after she completed her final wartime mission. Whittlesey is no longer with us, stuffed or otherwise, but tells his first-person tale in the present of his actions. [image] McMurtry was Whittlesy’s second in command and a fascinating character in his own right - Image from Chris Rice Cooper’s blog The alternating chapters cleverly share opening lines that lead each narrator to offer their cross-species perspectives on similar processes and events. Chapter 1, for example, opens with Monuments matter most to pigeons and soldiers. Cher addresses her long display at the museum, and gives us a look at her life, living and displayed. Whit has become something of a monument himself, widely lauded for his leadership under extreme duress. There is even a film being made of the horror of The Lost Battalion, in which Whit and some of the other survivors play themselves. He would much prefer being able to return to anonymity, particularly as he is a gay man in the Jazz Age, in which finding love on the run was a risky enterprise. And PTSD is never much fun, particularly when tinged with survivor’s guilt, and a feeling that he is nobody’s hero. [image] The Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Manhattans Upper West Side – image from Wiki - Whit names this as a significant locale for him early in the book In preparation for the adventure, Rooney shows us the stages Cher and Whit go through to become combat ready. For Cher, it is training to sharpen and strengthen her homing instinct, and she turns out to be a natural, a champion even. We learn a lot about how special pigeons are, what is involved in their training, and a bit of the history of homing pigeons being used in war. Whit’s training may not have involved flapping, but it is no less interesting, seeing how the military encouraged educated sorts to get a taste of military life, before having to sign up for real, a trial subscription, if you will. This was news to me, as was the makeup of this particular division. How Whit grows into his command is beautifully portrayed. We see Whit and Cher both in combat, and we see them both in love, with mirrored romantic interests. We see them both considering the madness of men and how veterans might be used as props for ignoble purposes. We see them both yearning for home, and giving their all. A particular strength of the novel is pointing out how media influences political, and even military decisions, and how real events can be used by the cynical to support less than laudable aims, why some are hailed as heroes, while others, equally meritorious, are abandoned to a dark fate. [image] Image from Chris Rice Cooper’s blog This is an incredibly moving book. I counted nine times in my notes the word “tears.” Have those tissues or hankies locked and loaded. It is rich with new info. Fun to learn of Damon Runyon’s involvement. Rewarding to learn so much about about what makes pigeons so much more than Woody Alan’s memorable “rats with wings” putdown, homing pigeons in particular, news to me, at least, and I expect news to most readers. It was fascinating to learn about military life and recruitment in 1918. The use of Cher as a narrator was a bold choice, and, IMHO, entirely effective. Well, I did have one gripe re Cher. Rooney stretches her consciousness way too far near the end, as she perceives in the mode of an omniscient narrator things she could have no way of knowing. I am willing to suspend disbelief for the conscious bird, but this was a step too far. The experiences of Cher and Whit may have been personal, but the importance of the issues raised is universal and still with us today. The War to End All Wars did no such thing. But if you are looking for a wonderful read, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey will end your search, at least until you finish reading it. Battle was said to harden a man—during my youth I’d heard this stated in the same offhand tones used to discuss first Communions and debutante balls—but in my case there had been no hardening, only a constant effort to hold together despite proliferating cracks. Review posted – August 28, 2020 Publication dates ----------August 11, 2020 - hardcover ----------August 11, 2021 - Trade Paperback I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley. I was able to find my way to it with no problem at all. ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jul 29, 2020
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Aug 11, 2020
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Aug 10, 2020
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0393634973
| 9780393634976
| 0393634973
| 4.11
| 687
| Jul 28, 2020
| Jul 28, 2020
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it was amazing
| In the Bible, the apocalypse is not the final battle between good and evil—that is Armageddon, a word derived from an ancient military stronghold o In the Bible, the apocalypse is not the final battle between good and evil—that is Armageddon, a word derived from an ancient military stronghold on a trade route linking Egypt and the Middle East. An apocalypse is a revelation—literally an uncovering—about the future that is meant to provide hope in a time of uncertainty and fear.The above was quoted from the book. But in Olson’s Twitter feed he offers a slightly different take. The title is The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age. To be clear, apocalypse refers to the threat of nuclear war, not to the site itself.Most of us, if asked, could probably identify the Manhattan Project as the national undertaking that produced the atomic bombs used in World War II, and as the Ur prototype for every future absolutely-positively-got-to-do subsequent development drive, to be referred to forever as A Manhattan Project for [insert your national need here]. Many people, certainly those of my (boomer) generation, can easily recall seeing film clips of that first test explosion in New Mexico, and probably later tests that vaporized large portions of Pacific islands. But if we, as a group, were to be asked where the material that fueled those terrible explosions came from, I doubt that a majority would know. It was manufactured, primarily, in Hanford, Washington. [image] Nuclear reactors line the riverbank at the Hanford Site along the Columbia River in January 1960. The N Reactor is in the foreground, with the twin KE and KW Reactors in the immediate background. The historic B Reactor, the world's first plutonium production reactor, is visible in the distance. - Image and text from Wikipedia Steve Olson must have a fondness for things that go BOOOOOM!!! His last book was The Untold Story of Mount St. Helen’s. At least his earlier work did not deal in things that would be stopped by the TSA. This is a history. It was the drive during World War II to develop a nuclear bomb that drove the establishment of Hanford, and many other places. There have been a lot of books written about Los Alamos, and fewer about Oak Ridge, Tennessee. But the place that made the glowing special sauce has received scant historical attention, relatively. Olson, a local, sought to correct that imbalance. [image] Steve Olson - image from his Twitter pages I’ve been getting ready to write this book pretty much my whole life. I grew up in the 1960s in Othello, Washington, a small town in the south-central part of the state just over a ridgeline from a mysterious government facility called Hanford. We knew that Hanford was involved in the U.S. nuclear weapons program. Some people in town knew that it manufactured a substance called plutonium. But it was the Cold War. It was best not to ask too many questions. In 1984 I visited Hanford to write a story for Science 84 magazine, and by the end of the trip, I had decided to write a book about the place. Thirty-six years later, the book is done. - from the NASW interviewThis is a story of war, science, politics and people. It is a story of what was known, what knowledge was needed to move forward, whether known or not, a story of personal ambition and national requirements under the direst of circumstances, a story of patriotism and risk. Yes, we know how it all turned out, but maybe did not know where the turns were that needed to be made to ensure that outcome, maybe had less of an idea about who was involved, what they worked on, where, and why. And maybe did not know what blind alleys were entered before a clear route was constructed. [image] Aerial view of Hanford Construction Camp - image from the National Building Museum And that development began with science. Olson walks us through the steps that had to be taken to advance from theory to implementation. Here is some of it: 1932 - discovery that neutrons are the glue holding electrons and protons and the nucleus of atoms together 1934 - a French scientist discovers that bombarding any material with subatomic particles creates unstable materials that decay down to stable ones. This was a huge discovery, artificially induced radioactivity. 1939 - German scientists discovered that bombarding uranium with neutrons does not cause it to change into materials adjacent on the periodic table, but to split, releasing vast amounts of energy. Uh oh. Might be a good idea to get some control over this before it was developed by someplace Hitlerian and applied to a dark purpose. And so on…There were many steps leading from the science to the making of an operational bomb (and using nuclear power to generate electricity for that matter). I bet that for most of us many of these details will be news. Many were for me. In 1941, the US government, alarmed by the possibility of a Nazi-bomb, gets cracking, FDR accepting the recommendation of Vannevar Bush, head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), established earlier that year.. [image] The B Reactor at Hanford was the world’s first large-scale nuclear reactor. It produced plutonium for the device tested at the Trinity site in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, and for the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. The B Reactor was permanently shut down in 1968, and is now being converted into a museum. - image and text from The National Buildings Museum – Secret Cities exhibition ”I knew that the effort would be expensive, that it might seriously interfere with other war work. But the overriding consideration was this: I had great respect for German science. If a bomb were possible, if it turned out to have enormous power, the result in the hands of Hitler might enable him to enslave the world. It was essential to get there first, if an all-out American effort could accomplish the difficult task.”Even before it was known if a bomb could be made at all, it was known that there were materials that would be needed for it, and at a large scale. December 16, 1942 found Col. Franklin T. Matthias…and two DuPont engineers headed for the Pacific Northwest and southern California to investigate possible production sites. Of the possible sites available, none had a better combination of isolation, long construction season, and abundant water for hydroelectric power than those found along the Columbia and Colorado Rivers. After viewing six locations in Washington, Oregon and California, the group agreed that the area around Hanford, Washington, best met the criteria established by the Met Lab scientists and DuPont engineers. - from The Atomic Heritage FoundationOlson writes of the displacement of locals that took place. Part of the project entailed housing tens of thousands of new Hanford workers. Five years before Levittown, the United States government built the first standardized suburb. Of course, it came with a surveillance state attached, and provided endless fodder for conspiracy theorists and science-fiction writers with diverse notions of an Oddville sort of place. (All hail the Glow Cloud) He tells of the construction of the first nuclear reactor, and many that followed, and the enormous buildings that were used for chemically extracting plutonium from the product of the reactors. We learn about the environmental degradation that resulted and the eventual acceptance of responsibility for cleaning up. (without, of course, adequate funding to do the job completely, now estimated to require $300 to $600 billion) [image] Aerial view of “Queen Mary” chemical separation plants at Hanford, Washington - image from the U.S. Department of Energy. Olson tells of the various teams that were working on different aspects of the Manhattan Project, even where the name for the project originated, as well as the origin of the element name plutonium. He uses a familiar technique for history writing, focusing on specific individuals and letting us follow them through at least part of the story. This gives the events the more personal feel of a human element, relieving us of the perils of a straight up recitation of facts. Prime among these is Glenn Seaborg, a co-discoverer of plutonium. We follow him from his education in Physics and Chemistry at UC Berkeley, headed by Ernest Lawrence and Robert Oppenheimer, through several stages of the big project to come. We get to know Enrico Fermi, Leona Woods, the only woman on Fermi’s team, Susan Leckband, who arrives at Hanover in the 1980s with a high school degree, and winds up running the place, and others. There were plenty of personality conflicts that made forward movement sometimes difficult. Olson gives considerable space to a very moving description, by Nagasaki resident Dr. Raisuke Shirabe, of his experience of the bombing and its after-effects. [image] A 1963 explosives test near Hanford to determine the safest underground spot for disposing of radioactive waste – image and text from NY Times - Credit...Associated Press And we learn details that are amusing and alarming, like a radioactive vending machine and the surprising material used for swabbing aluminum tubes for the reactors, and the considerable challenges entailed in transporting plutonium and other dodgy materials from Hanford to (well, that’s classified). Add in the challenge of maintaining a safe work environment without letting the workers know what it was that they were working on. [image] A contemporary (6/3/2020) view of Hanford from the ridgeline between Hanford and Othello, where Olson was raised - his photo, from Twitter Olson brings us up to the present with the changes Hanford has gone through in the years since the war, the environmental toxicity that became apparent, cleanups that have been done, and remain, and how the facility is being used today. It does seem quaint that the expectation in the 1940s, when large amounts of radioactive waste were first being generated, was that science would come up with a solution to that problem before too terribly long. We are still waiting for that. [image] Many roads around Hanford are marked with signs warning travelers they're entering a hazardous area (The Oregonian) Hanford, Washington, provided a critical service to its country in a time of war, and got our nation militarily prepared, for good or ill, for the Cold War to come. It did this at considerable cost to its people and its environment. It holds a unique place in the annals of our nation, and should never be forgotten. By writing a popular history that is informative as well as entertaining and very readable, Steve Olson has made it likelier that Hanford will be remembered by a wide swath of Americans, who might never, otherwise, have learned of it, and thus, has done a service to us all. The Apocalypse Factory is not a disastrous ending to anything, but a very welcome revelation. The most recent studies indicate that a nuclear exchange of even 50 Nagasaki-type bombs would produce climate changes unprecedented in recorded human history and threaten the global food supply. A large-scale exchange of nuclear weapons would so reduce temperatures that most of the humans who survived the initial bombing would starve. Many people are concerned today that climate change poses a threat to human civilization but the most certain and immediate threat still resides in the nuclear weapons sitting in missile silos, bombers, and submarines around the world. Review first posted – August 7, 2020 Publication dates ----------July 28, 2020 - Hardcover ----------January 4, 2022 - Trade paperback [image] [image] [image] [image] I received an ARE of this book from Norton, but was sworn to secrecy until this review was unleashed on the world. =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and GR pages Interviews -----National Association of Science Writers (NASW) Steve Olson: Apocalypse Factory -----NPR - Main Street on Prairie Public - audio – 53:00 – by Doug Hamilton Items of Interest -----Atomic Heritage Foundation - Hanford, WA -----Wiki on Vannevar Bush - it was his recommendation to FDR that got The Manhattan Project started -----Wiki on the Hibakusha, survivors of the nuclear bombs -----Atomic Age - The Trinity Test ...more |
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it was amazing
| With Trump in the White House there would presumably be extensive digging into every deal he’d ever done, every partner he’d ever worked with, ever With Trump in the White House there would presumably be extensive digging into every deal he’d ever done, every partner he’d ever worked with, every loan he’d ever received—many of which involved Deutsche. And the facts that Trump’s election was under a cloud because of Russia’s efforts to sway the vote and that his leading lender had for years been engaged in money-laundering activity in Russia—well, it didn’t take a genius to realize that real or imagined dots would soon be connected linking Deutsche to Russia to Donald Trump. This was especially true since the bank a decade earlier had connected Trump with wealthy Russians as he prepared to build resorts in Hawaii and Mexico.We all know that those much anticipated revelations have had scant time in the sun, but we also know that Deutsche Bank (DB) is where a whole bunch of the bodies are buried. In looking at DB, Donald Trump makes up only a small part of the book, but he is the tale that wags the dog in this biography of a bank. Donald Trump is a deadbeat, a con man extraordinaire. After getting massive loans from a range of New York banks, and stiffing them, resulting in massive losses, he was essentially blacklisted in New York. No reputable bank would lend him anything. Yet, as he announced his candidacy for the presidency, there was one financial entity still willing to do deals with him. How did DB get to a point where they were the only bank in the world that would lend money to such a complete fiscal lowlife. How could any bank make loans of billions of dollars to him and his family? [image] David Enrich - image from AirMail.News Enrich introduces us early to a key figure in understanding DB’s secrets. Val Broeksmit was the ne’er do well stepson of Bill Broeksmit, a reasonably ethical guy who had been called on multiple times to step in at DB and make sure things were being done on the up and up. When they were not, he let upper management know. This does not mean that his advice was always heeded. But there came a time when regulators were closing in, and a part of DB where he had particular responsibility had been doing business in an unacceptable way. He had missed it. Years of working at this mad company had taken a toll. He had retired or tried to retire several times, but, like Michael Corleone in Godfather III, he finds it is not so easy to stay out. The years of major stress and this final failing, his internalization of the stresses of the company, became too much. Bill hanged himself. (although Val thinks he was killed) Val managed to get his hands on considerable quantities of stepdad’s communications. How he uses this trove, and how it is used by others, researchers, authors, and government officials, forms a tranche that permeates the modern story of the bank. As an example of how greed turns good people turn bad, though, it is never made clear that Broeksmit had ever really done anything illegal or clearly unethical. Maybe it is more that this criminal corporation had destroyed a guy who was basically decent, who had the temerity to ask how bank actions might affect their clients. [image] Bill Broeksmit - image from The New York Post Enrich gives us a look at the bank’s beginnings in the 19th century, its later alignment with Nazis, as it removed Jews from its board and staff, its financing of the construction of Aushwitz, and its survival, after the war. The USA wanted the bank liquidated, but the UK wanted it around to help in paying the UK the war debts Germany had agreed to. [image] Val Broeksmit - image from the NY Times DB settled in to being a conservative bank, serving businesses, and scrupulously looking after their clients’ interests. But a new element entered as derivatives began to grow from a conservative way to hedge one’s risks to a form of casino gambling. DB looked to expand from its European roots to a global presence. They brought in people, from the USA and elsewhere, who had the expertise to establish DB in these new markets. [image] Josef Ackermann - image from The Irish Times - DB CEO from 2002 to 2012 – he led the huge expansion of the corporation It was wildly successful, even if the paper DB held, now that it was gambling with its own as well its clients’ money, might be wildly overvalued. DB had made itself into the largest bank in the world. Part of the success was because the top bosses demanded insane levels of growth. At one point it was expected that profits should grow 25% a year. In no sane world was this possible. But there were, however, insane ways to achieve the goal. Do business with dodgy characters with whom no one else wanted to do business, and charge them hefty fees for the privilege. People like Russian oligarchs, middle eastern royal families, and kleptocrats, were eager for ways to transform their local currencies into dollars or euros, and DB was more than happy to help. They were also willing to match eastern dirty laundry with western spin cycles, and thus were able to connect Russian officials busy looting their nation’s resources with, say, real estate developers in need of large cash infusions to pursue expensive projects, for a piece of the action. Legality was an unfortunate victim to such transactions. International sanctions were ignored. Adherence to fiduciary norms took a hit. The result was that DB eventually became known for the stain of its dishonesty with its own customers, and willingness to cut legal corners to sustain an unnatural level of growth. Neither did the Mad Max atmosphere at the bank do much for the people working there, except, of course, for those directing the crimes, who made off with staggering sums. Enrich tells the DB story by focusing on a series of individuals at the upper levels of management, offering not only a look at where they came from and what they did in their executive positions, but a take on their personalities, what made them tick, even, for some, their family lives. This approach is a common, but effective one, that succeeds in making the DB story not one of a glass-encased corporate entity (or, a person, according to Mitt Romney) but a human story, with some decent people, some bad guys, and some really, really bad guys. [image] The DB towers in Frankfurt – image by Krisztian Bocs for Bloomberg There are some fun bits in here that are likely to surprise you, like how Val and his trove of dad’s intel got connected with Adam Schiff by way of Moby. Mostly, though, Val’s doings seem sad rather than enlightening, but do offer a bit of a look at how difficult it can be, sometimes, for journalists and investigators to secure much-needed information, when the source is less than a standup sort. [image] Anshu Jain - Co-CEO of DB from 2011 to 2015 – he left as a result of the the Libor Rate-fixing Scandal - image from FirstPost.com By the end you will see how it came about that DJT had found a financial home with DB, and you will know what it took for a conservative institution to have totally lost its mind and evolved into a grand scale criminal enterprise. And you will be left wondering just how long it will take for the wheels of justice to grind their way to delivering actual justice to so many who flaunt the laws to the detriment of the rest of us. In the final months of the Obama administration, all signs had pointed to charges soon being filed against bank employees and probably the bank itself. At the very least, a multibillion-dollar financial penalty looked all but certain.Something curious, however, had happened as soon as Trump took the oath of office. The investigation had gone silent. Week after week, Deutsch’s lawyers and executives wondered when they would get an update. At first, they worried that the delay spelled trouble. Perhaps, after campaigning as a populist, after vowing that he was “not going to let Wall Street get away with murder,” Trump planned an aggressive crackdown on banking malfeasance. Perhaps, after having his election victory tarnished by Russian interference, Trump would try to dispel those suspicions with a high-profile assault on Russian money laundering. But as the months passed, and nothing happened, executives’ fears faded. One source of relief was the realization that two of the Justice Department’s most powerful prosecutors, Geoffrey Berman and Robert Khuzami, both had previously represented Deutsche…Bank executives soon concluded that Russia was off-limits, too hot to handle, for the Trump administration. So, it seemed, was Deutsche. Review first posted – February 28, 2020 Publication dates ----------February 18, 2020 - hardcover ----------December 16, 2020 - trade paperback [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s GR, Twitter, Instagram and FB pages Interviews ----- Expected case against Deutsche Bank disappeared in Trump transition -----Rachel Maddow - Transcript of the entire show -----NPR - 'Dark Towers' Exposes Chaos And Corruption At The Bank That Holds Trump's Secrets - by Dale Davies Items of Interest -----Why are so many bankers committing suicide? -----NY Times – by Enrich - Me and My Whistle-Blower -----The Libor Scandal ...more |
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ebook
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0593137582
| 9780593137581
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| 4.15
| 1,488
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| Jan 14, 2020
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it was amazing
| Why this Book? To paraphrase the political scientist Liam Neeson: “I have a very particular set of skills. Skills that I acquired over a very long Why this Book? To paraphrase the political scientist Liam Neeson: “I have a very particular set of skills. Skills that I acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.” [image] Rick Wilson - image from Fast Company – photo credit - Celine Grouard Rick Wilson is the Don Rickles (Mister Warmth) of political punditry. They are both laugh out loud funny and extremely caustic. Rickles, who died in 2017 after a very long and successful career as a stand-up comedian and actor made his living by making people laugh while saying terrible things about them, to their faces. Wilson could probably have a career in comedy if he wanted one, but he has other ambitions. Thankfully they are not the same as his old ambitions. Wilson has made a career of advising Republican candidates for office, and working as an opinion writer. He advised Rudy Giuliani while he was mayor of New York City, and in his campaign against Hillary Clinton for Senate. He was a field director in George H.W. Bush’s 1988 presidential run. In 2002 he was a media advisor to Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss. In that campaign, he attacked Democratic Senator Max Cleland, who had lost three limbs to a grenade in Viet Nam, as soft on defense, dishonestly linking him with Osama bin Laden. He created an ad in the 2008 presidential race that attacked Obama for his association with Reverend Jeremiah Wright. In 2014 he crafted a GOP ad that used hatred of Obama as motivation for voting against other Dems. In 2016 he worked for Carlos Cantera’s unsuccessful campaign for the Senate in Washington, and also worked for Marco Rubio in his successful Senatorial bid. His efforts have been characterized by negativity, delight in going after opponents with whatever weapons work, and a feckless disregard for the truth. In 2016, however, this paragon of virtue was among many Republicans whose tolerance for awfulness was pretty high, who found Donald Trump an unacceptable candidate, and became what we now refer to as a never-Trumper. Yeah, unfortunately, there was always a dynamic pressure inside the party. The fiscal people and the individual liberty people would keep the social conservatives from getting too out of control. The social conservatives would keep the fiscal people from getting too out of control. The foreign policy people, this tripartite internal, the three-legged stool they used to call it. Well with Trump, that all fell apart. It's all gone. It's all id. It's everything that's in their heads. They're told, "You can have whatever you want, we're going to burn it all down." And that's what they're doing. - from the Salon interviewThere are many who fit that description, Republicans who will never support Trump. Of course, these days, while some such folks remain Republican, a growing number have abandoned the GOP, as the party they loved has become the party of Trump, a cult-like organization that bears little resemblance, in their minds, to its predecessor. (See the link in EXTRA STUFF to The Lincoln Project, an organization of erstwhile Republican Never-Trumpers that seeks to help end the Reign of the Suntan King) These folks still support a host of policy positions that I, and most of my fellow and sister Democrats, find unacceptable, appalling, and often inhuman. Nevertheless, while we may flip birds and scream epithets at each other across a river, we share a common cause in not allowing that river to rise up like the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and destroy us all. Donald Jessica Trump (name variant courtesy of Randy Rainbow) is that flood and we need to make common cause with some of those awful people on the other side to prevent an existential catastrophe. While merrily hurling insults at Democrats, Rick Wilson, former GOP mischief-maker, current Never-Trumper, and really funny guy, now offers his acquired wisdom to Democrats. I recognize that the next two paragraphs (about 450 words) constitute an aside, so am tucking them under a spoiler tag to spare those who object to my leisurely pace. There is nothing remotely spoilerish here.(view spoiler)[I read this book in an unusual manner. Typically, I take in my primary read each week, whether paper or e-book, at my iMac, entering notes as I go along. My secondary book I read at bedtime, upstairs, anywhere from ten to twenty pages a night, most of the time, entering notes into a laptop or paper notebook. I had Wilson’s book on my radar, and on the family stack, but there was no certainty I would review it at all. It so happened that a long-awaited front door was being delivered on February 10. Had to get up early in order to take up guard duty. The work entailed required that the existing front door be removed, and would mean a serious security risk for the several hours the installers needed to complete the installation. Not a big deal for most of us. A bit chilly, perhaps, but putting on a few layers takes care of that. No concerns about home invasions. But we had considerable concern about one or more of our four-legged family members giving in to their native curiosity and making a dash for the exit. While it is possible to wrangle most herd members into rooms with doors that close with cat treats, there are always a few who are not so easily suckered. Thus, guard duty. I firmly planted my bottom on a chair near the front door, trying my best not to pay any attention to the oral garbage being spewed by the workmen’s radio. It was tuned to Rush Limbaugh’s show, and others of that ilk. The work took about six hours. Instead, I did my best to bury my consciousness in Wilson’s book. It was not hard. Wilson may still give off the brimstone aroma of a Republican political operative, but he is LOL funny. As much as he may insult members of my Democratic tribe, justifiably, regarding our campaigning skills, he saves most of his ordnance for Trump and his minions. Couldn’t help myself. Every now and again, I would begin laughing out loud, literally. My wife, working in the living room at the time, would pipe up “Rick?” To which I would respond, “Yep.” And then read her the passage of the moment. No note taking, digital or pen and notebook. I was just reading this to read it. It would be one of about ten to fifteen books I read each year with no intention of writing a review. But that changed. I managed to read all but one chapter during my protracted sit-down. Finished the final bit the next day. Knew I had to let folks know about this one. Now, counting heads…98, 99, 100, 101. Yep, they’re all accounted for. (hide spoiler)] The core can be distilled down to a few nuggets. Donald Trump is a menace to the nation we love, and we need to work together to remove him from the White House. Wilson can help, and he knows what he is talking about. The only real issue in the 2020 presidential race is Donald Trump, keep him or dump him. Those who are in his camp are not worth your time and energy. Ditto for those who are firmly against him. It boils down to fifteen states where the outcome is not already assured. Focus almost all your campaigning energy there. Wilson goes into detail about the best ways to attack Trump, both in the content of one’s media approach and in the need to tailor that approach to each locale. There is a lot to learn here about the details of the campaigning craft. Of particular interest was a breakdown of voters into “hidden tribes within the electorate.” Identifying where people fall in this sorting helps define how candidates might try to reach them. Q - If you were advising on the economy to these Democrats, what would you recommend?He talks about the horrific downside of a second Trump term, including the grooming of Ivanka and Don Jr to take over in 2024, the expansive corruption of all that is not already corrupt, the further degradation of the planet, and our remaining civil liberties, the jailing of his opponents, and more, none of it pretty. Wilson offers a list of Trumpian issues to focus on, depending on the location, corruption, misogyny and sexual aggression, paying off porn stars, kids in cages, alienating our allies while cozying up to authoritarians, and so much more. Hammer his ego, his declining mental capacity, weight, tiny hands, his actual net worth, his enslavement by Putin. And now his ongoing corruption of the Justice Department. Rick's theory is not (yet) endorsed by any Gallup poll. But it makes sense. So how would Rick hit Trump? "I'd hit him on his mental instability, because he thinks he's smart and sane and he's not. He thinks he's a remarkable communicator ... he's not, he's a 70-year-old asshole from Queens." Then Rick would go after his "reputation for wealth, which is unfounded in large measure, and that's a soft spot for him ..." A billionaire client of Rick's once said: "I'm a billionaire. Trump is a clown living on credit." So having real billionaires like Mark Cuban attack Trump in an ad would be an effective tactic. - from Cracked interviewWilson also offers advice that is fairly useless, urging Dems to start, before they can really turn their attention and their remaining funds to, going after the cheating Cheeto President. Not everyone is Michael Bloomburg, with, essentially, endless funds. (Mayor Mike entered the race too late to be considered in the book.) He urges Dems to minimize talk of policy. Again, this ignores the primary season. An ability to kick Trump in the nuts as needed is a talent to be admired, but there still needs to be some policy vetting by Democratic voters. I expect the central party is hurting for funds, (pure guesswork on my part) as most available contributions are probably going to candidates, so even the Democratic Party itself likely lacks the means to implement an attack-early-and-often strategy as soon as would be desirable. The book is divided into Six Parts. Within each part the chapters are introduced by what are frequently LOL short comedic pieces. Part One chapter intros are Tweets From Donald Trump’s Second Term, Part Two chapter intros are from White House Diaries: Melania Trump, and so on. A sample from Part One: @realDonaldTrump: some lying liberal media who are DFAILING BADLY and will soon be bankrupt like the Bezos Washington Post are reporting that Stephen Miller was arrested for making a suit from a woman’s skin and eating her. FAKE NEWS. He did NOT EAT HER! Stephen is doing a GRATE job!There are plenty of well-deserved shots taken at Democratic campaigners and some less-deserved snark directed at Democratic values and programs, but that is part of the package. Overall, this is one of those books that anyone involved in politics in any way should read. It is funny, profane, and wildly insightful and useful. Every Democratic political operative should have a copy and I expect to see those copies heavily dog-eared. For the rest of us, if you enjoy a good dose of laughter and cynicism with your political writings, this is the book for you. Wilson may be the demon spawn of Roger Ailes and Lee Atwater, but he is one funny, smart sulfur-scented writer. His book not only explains what has gone wrong before but offers the tools to see why the political ads that bombard your TV and other screens are working or failing. We cannot afford four more years of the Turd Reich. Read this book! He will always be with us, to the end of our days, either as a warning or as a boot stomping on our faces, forever. Review first posted – February 21, 2020 Publication date – January 14, 2020 ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that I have moved it to the comments section directly below, in comment #1 [image] ...more |
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Feb 10, 2020
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Feb 11, 2020
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Feb 10, 2020
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Hardcover
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3.93
| 11,618
| Nov 19, 2019
| Nov 19, 2019
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liked it
| He was like a 12-year-old in an air traffic control tower, pushing the buttons of government indiscriminately, indifferent to the planes skidding a He was like a 12-year-old in an air traffic control tower, pushing the buttons of government indiscriminately, indifferent to the planes skidding across the runway and the flights frantically diverting away from the airport. This was not how it was supposed to be.---------------------------------------- In the history of American democracy, we have had undisciplined presidents. We have had incurious presidents. We have had inexperienced presidents. We have had amoral presidents. Rarely if ever before have we had them all at once.Given the spate of news reports and exposés in newspapers, magazines, TV, and in social media, it is impossible to keep up, as the outrages revealed last week are topped by the revelations brought forth this week, which will, of course, be topped by the revelations coming out next week in the book by whichever former Administration official or government whistle blower is next up. What makes any of them any different from any other? We know that Trump lies incessantly, so it is no shock to anyone with a functional brain when yet another lie is shown to be just that. What makes this book different (and, having read only a few of these things, I may be omitting similarities to books I have not taken in) is the view, fueled by observation, of just how bad things actually are. In September, 2018, The New York Times published an op-ed by the author (I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration), which caused a stir. The notions expressed there were developed into a book, A Warning, which was published in November 2019. The administration was only a few weeks in, and already the mayhem made everyone look foolish. Internal whispers grew louder; This was not a way to do business. As a result, people who’d previously been outsiders to Trump World grew closer to one another and developed a bizarre sense of fraternity, like bank-robbery hostages lying on the floor at gun-point, unable to sound the alarm but aware that everyone else was stricken with the same fear of the unknown.The author, who purports to be a “Senior Trump Administration Official,” divides the book between references to classical sociopolitical looks at leadership, and his-or-her first-hand observations (and second-hand reports) of Trump’s behavior, with a bit of analysis of the groups and competing interests within the Administration. Anonymous looks at what the ancient Greeks considered the ideal traits of a leader, using Cicero’s De Officiis (On Duties) as the measure. Point by point, the author contrasts the qualities thought desirable in a leader to the traits of Donald J. Trump. Things like Wisdom, Sense of Justice, Courage, and Temperance. It will come as no surprise that Trump presents the exact opposite traits from what one would want. Duh-uh. But it is nice to see it spelled out in reference to a classic perspective. This is mostly a been-there, done-that listing of the awfulness of Trump, delineated by type and sub-type of awfulness. Yawn. In a more alarming reference, Anonymous looks at Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, a right-wing screed which sees in most state intervention in an otherwise unfettered (feral?) economy enslavement by the state. It is much loved by right-wing grad students, the same folks who read Ayn Rand with one hand. But there are some pretty good passages on totalitarianism, which is far likelier from the right than from the left, particularly in the USA. A quote from Hayek and some summaries of Hayek’s points sound just about right re what an aspiring autocrat needs: “He must gain the support of the docile and gullible, who have no strong convictions of their own, but are ready to accept a ready-made system of values if it is only drummed into their ears sufficiently loudly and frequently.”Of course, Hayek goes too far, an autocrat needs a group with questionable morals, which will also tend to be undereducatedSorry, this is pure class bias, presuming as it does that the well-educated, who tend to be wealthier, are of a higher moral character than the poorer, less-well-educated rabble. Are the Kochs well educated? The Republicans in the Senate? The thieves on Wall Street? The CEOs of oil and gas transnationals? If anything, the middle, working and poor classes might be said to be of superior moral quality to those in power, who often seem selected by their degree of disregard for everyone else. The primary benefit to reading A Warning is to get a “you-are-there” sense of just how much of an idiot Trump truly is. A man of unparalleled venality, inflated self-regard, uninterested in learning, believer that all knowledge is to be found inside his tiny brain, a thief, liar, life-long criminal, and legend in his own mind, convinced from birth that rules do not apply to him, and now empowered to surround himself with a rotating cast of sycophants who serve to reflect back to him his vastly inflated sense of his own infallibility. Quoting the Boss, Badlands, Poor man want to be rich. Rich man want to be king. And a king ain't satisfied till he rules everything. Continuing on, King wants to be god. It worked for the Roman emperors. It is not at all shocking that Trump is encouraging the lunatics who proclaim him the second coming. Without, of course, all that messiness on Calvary. Even for those of us who tend to regard him as the epitome of the inherent evil of entitlement-plus-money, it becomes quite clear that those in the asylum with him have a much darker view of his mental competence than the general public. The secondary benefit is to get some detail on how the Madness (or is it criminality?) of King Donald manifests. We can tell when Trump is preparing to ask his lawyers to do something unethical or foolish because that’s when he begins scanning the room for note takers. “What the fuck are you doing?” he shouted at an aide who was scribbling in a notebook during a meeting…His paranoia is the best evidence of a guilty conscience.If you wonder why the man who criticized Obama for playing too much golf spends such an incredible amount of time away from the West Wing, one reason (not to minimize Trump’s aversion to actual work) is that his staff schedules him for as much time as possible out of town to reduce the likelihood of major screw-ups. It is not news that the man made famous for the line “You’re Fired,” on TV is too cowardly to fire anyone in person, preferring to do the job by tweet or by having another underling do the deed. What Anonymous calls The Steady State is comprised of like-minded individuals, die-hard Republicans, who favor GOP policies, but are concerned about the behavior of the president. They do what they can to siderail, dissuade, or ignore presidential wishes that fall afoul of the law, common sense, or human decency (in that order). However, even Anonymous admits that the Resistance in the White House has seen its numbers drop and its hopes fade. Not sure if that means Anonymous is now a lone voice or not, but if resistance to foolishness is a lost cause, what is Anonymous still doing there? Anonymous presents clear Republican ignorance, or dishonesty, certainly bias on many occasions. For example, Anon lauds the wisdom of the founders in choosing a representative rather than a direct democracy, as the mob is too subject to flattery and demagoguery, and will overwhelm more sedate reason. While there certainly is some basis for this concern, this manages to put the responsibility for such danger entirely on the people, ignoring that it is business, the business of Fox News and lobbyists, for example, that create these groundswells, and which the Republican Party has been more than happy to exploit to get its way. He lauds Trump for installing a Stronger conservative bench. The installing of right-wing judges on SCOTUS would have happened under any Republican president, and was made possible in part by Mitch McConnell refusing to bring Obama’s nominee to the Senate, essentially stealing a seat. Great guys, those Republicans. He also lauds the burdensome red tape that has been slashed on his watch, closely matched by the resulting degradation of our environment, which is somehow not mentioned. Add to it the changes to our insane tax code. Oh, you mean adding over a trillion dollars to the federal debt by giving money away to the wealthy and to corporations? Now, that’s crazy. And on it goes. Excerpts from A Warning were released in The Washington Post a few weeks before publication. One highlight was of a possible midnight self-massacre to let the public know of the chaos that reigned in the White House. But they didn’t, did they? Which is a lot like watching Jeff Flake or Susan Collins twisting themselves into pretzels before the cameras to avoid admitting they would toe the party line, only to apply all ten toes to that line when it came time to vote. So, aside from dividing Trump’s lackeys into Sycophants (shirts) and Silent Abettors (skins), how much do we actually learn here? Primarily the value of A Warning is in showing us the depth of the morass, just how venal, just how criminally inclined, just how ignorant, just how egotistical, just how intolerant, just how cruel and mean-spirited, just how resistant to knowledge, and just what an absolutely awful human being Trump is. And to portray a White House staff that has to wonder, every bloody day when they wake up, what has he done now? Yeah, and? A Warning does not really tell us much that we did not already know. It is entertaining (in a dark way) at times, but sometimes also feels loaded with filler. It is not a bad book, but in a world lousy with better books about Trump and books about the issues which Trump has impacted like cruise passengers fed bad sushi, I would look elsewhere. You have been warned. We learned that, given enough time and space, Donald J. Trump will abuse any power he is given. Review first posted – January 10, 2020 Publication date – November 19, 2019 . PS - If we still have a republic after Donald Trump walks out of the Oval, or more likely, is carried out in a body bag after a third or fourth secret heart attack, or, my personal favorite, is frog-marched out of the office in the custody of armed law-enforcement or military officers, we will owe him a debt of gratitude. Donald Trump has given the United States an invaluable lesson. By his total disregard for social, legal, and political norms, by his willingness to thumb his nose at the rule of law, he has shown us where our fault lines lie. He has shown us what can happen if we put a malignant narcissist or even a sociopath into the presidency. And we should use this lesson to construct a stronger union, one that does not rely on the good will of decent people to lead our nation, but enshrines into law mechanisms that assure that another Donald Trump can never again happen here. (As of November 2022, we are still waiting) [image] [image] [image] [image] =============================EXTRA STUFF Items of Interest -----De Officiis by Marcus Tullius Cicero – on Gutenberg -----Springsteen - Badlands ----NY Times – September, 2018 - I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration ----The Road to Serfdom - by Friedrich Hayek -----The Lincoln Project - Bloodlines ----Other Trumpian books worth a look -----Tyrannical Minds by Dean Haycock -----The Plot to Destroy Democ racy by Malcolm Nance -----Fear by Bob Woodward -----Collusion- by Luke Harding -----Trumpocracy by David Frum -----Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff -----Unbelievable by Katy Tur -----The Case for Impeachment by Allan J. Lichtman -----Truth in Our Times by David E. McCraw ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 17, 2019
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Dec 29, 2019
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Dec 25, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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0525575472
| 9780525575474
| 0525575472
| 4.35
| 15,164
| Oct 01, 2019
| Oct 01, 2019
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it was amazing
| I like driving a pickup and heating my house as much as the next person, and the through line between energy and economic growth and development is I like driving a pickup and heating my house as much as the next person, and the through line between energy and economic growth and development is as clear to me as an electric streetlight piercing the black night. But the political impact of the industry that brings us those things is also worth recognizing as a key ingredient in the global chaos and democratic downturn we’re now living through.Rachel Maddow is the top news personality at MSNBC, host of The Rachel Maddow Show for the last eleven years. One of the smartest people to be found on your television, or screen of choice, she relies on research, facts, and informed guests to present her viewers with as high-end an hour of political news coverage as you can find anywhere, all while being upbeat, friendly, funny, and warm. Watching her show it might not be totally obvious, because she is so nice, but she is a first class hard-edged, incisive intellectual, a Rhodes scholar with a triumph of a book already to her credit, Drift, on our national tendency to war. One other gift Maddow possesses is a talent for story-telling. Watch her A-block (the opening 20 minute segment of her show) some night, any night, for a taste. In Blowout, Maddow looks at the centrality of oil (by which we mean oil and gas) to our history and to the events of the world today. Rachel Maddow didn't set out to write a book. But a nagging question led her there: Why did Russia interfere in America's 2016 presidential election, and why attack the United States in such a cunning way? Although the MSNBC host regularly devotes ample airtime to the topic of Russia on The Rachel Maddow Show, her digging led her to a thesis she thought was too long for TV.[image] Rachel - image from Hooch.net From her depiction of Vladimir Putin’s visit to NYC to celebrate the opening of the first Lukoil gas station in the USA, to the story of alarming means being used in an early attempt at fracking, from a look at how third-world dictators live large on oil revenues, while their people suffer, from the history of oil to the history of Putin, from the big personalities to the local damage, she takes you right there and walks you through the events like a docent leading a group through the Met, a very slippery, oily Met. Watch that glimmery puddle! On our right is a family tree that echoes the shape of a gusher, noting the beginning of oil drilling in 1859, see where Rockefeller and Standard Oil gets into the game, and everything spreads out from there until the canvas is almost entirely covered in iridescent black goo. [image] John D. Rockefeller - image from Curious Historian This one over here is quite surprising. There is a story to the mushrooms. You think fracking for natural gas is a nasty, brute force extraction method, generating vast collateral damage? You would be right of course, but in the 60s and 70s an even scarier method of loosening up the gas trapped in underground shale and sandstone was tested, three times, Nukes! Yes, that’s right. As a part of Project Plowshare, three Hiroshima-level nuclear bombs were detonated in the continental USA. Thankfully, and unsurprisingly, the resulting gas carried a level of radioactivity that was considered unmarketable, so the project was abandoned. Guess it had a very short half-life. Moving on, look over here. We have an excellent painting that shows how the oil/gas companies control academic research as well as government regulatory agencies. Notice how the energy company board overlaps the board of the local university, the one sponsoring the researcher who is looking into the possible causes for the steroidal increase in earthquakes in Oklahoma, an increase that occurred only after the introduction of fracking technology. You might recognize the large claw-like form in the painting, and the academic in that claw being squeezed. Definitely not OK. On your left you will see a more modern image, a dynamic sculpture, showing the recent story of fracking, very angular, as the straight vertical lines veer suddenly horizontal, but are accompanied by vast volumes of a goo called slickwater being forced into the ground. If you look back up to the top, you will see a geyser of very crude crude being forced up out of the ground. The artist has included, as part of the exhibition, a special platform around the work. Go ahead, step up. That bouncing and rumbling you feel beneath you is meant to mimic the actual experience of residents in heavily fracked locations. [image] Putin with his parents in 1985, before being sent to Germany as a KGB officer - image from wikimedia These lovely gilded tryptichs up ahead tell the story of Vladimir Putin, his rise from KGB operative in Germany to possible anti-Christ. Each panel shows a step along his path, growing from unknown KGB agent to mayor of St Petersburg, to the accumulation of a group of loyalists called the siloviki (which would be a great brand name for one of the few products Russia still produces, vodka), to aligning with, then back-stabbing Boris Yeltsin, as the USSR descended from failed social experiment to full on gangster-state kleptocracy. We see in this one to your right how Pootee murders or jails not only political opponents, but anyone foolish enough to own a successful business he wants to steal. Doesn’t the blood red go so dramatically against the gold? Russia's shaky economy, hampered by a reliance on oil and gas, helps explain the country's weakness, and "some of Russia's weakness explains why they attacked us in the way they did," Maddow argues. She says Vladimir Putin exploited Russia's lucrative oil industry to support his vision of making Russia a superpower again. "When you've got one resource that's pulling in such a big revenue stream, you tend to end up with very rich elites who will do anything to hold onto power who stopped doing the other things that governments should otherwise be doing to serve the needs of the people," she said in an interview with All Things Considered. - from NPR[image] Aubrey McClendon - image from Business Insider In the next room we have a few portraits of energy bigwigs, Aubrey McClendon, a genius at picking land to hold for resource development, promoter of shale and gas drilling in the USA and iconic Oklahoma City booster. Liked to use company money for his personal needs and had issues with price-fixing collusion. Got kicked out of his own company. Robert S. Kerr, founder of Kerr McGee, and a remarkably corrupt politician. Harold Hamm, a self-made billionaire who never saw an environmental regulation he did not hate, or a tax he was willing to accept. The big one at the end of the hall, the screaming T-Rex is, of course Rex Tillerson, still spreading carnage across the planet and not yet trapped in that tar-pit with the “DJT” inscription barely visible on it. As you can see in the painting, the artist was aware that T-Rex hunted in packs. No one is safe when these toothy critters were looking for a meal. The bones you see in the background are the remains of scientists who dared to describe the impact carbon-based energy usage has had on the planet, and residents who opposed the local leader siphoning off all the oil royalties for themselves. [image] Harold Hamm - image from AP via Politico Up ahead the mural you see may remind you of Picasso’s Guernica, but this one is called The Resource Curse. It shows how a poor country discovers oil, the pastoral fields being flooded with black, the local leader growing at one end of the mural from a small bully to an inflated grotesque crushing his people alongside an even larger T-rex, the people fleeing and screaming in despair. [image] Teodorin Nguema Obiang Mangue, son of the Equatorial Guinea president, living large on the oil revenues siphoned from the country – image, one of many showing his impressive array of insanely expensive vehicles, from Ghafla! Not all the reporting in the book is horrifying or depressing. Here is one that shows a ring of Russians holding hands, dressed like Americans, living in America. Russian spies, sent here to infiltrate the western enemy, sleeper cells, waiting for the day they would be summoned into action. It was the only part of the book that was laugh-out-loud funny. You’ll see why when you read it. [image] Ten members of the Russian spy program – the inspiration for the TV series The Americans - maybe you recognize a former neighbor here? – image from ABC.Net.AU The next room is kept nicely refrigerated. The ice sculpture in the middle of the room shows an oceanic drilling rig, with dark lines standing in for the inability of the rigs to keep from leaking, and the parts scattered on the icy ocean surface standing in for the advanced safety rig elements that were not used in these early drilling attempts. [image] The Discoverer - grounded in Unalaska, AK, unable to handle Arctic winds – not reassuring – image from Pew Trust As our tour comes to an end, you can leave those parkas in the bin by the door, and be sure to load up with paper towels from the table ahead. It would appear that the billions invested by the energy business in advancing the technology of extraction has in no way been matched by investment in researching clean-up tech. You hold in your hands the state of the art in oil spill clean-up. Pause briefly to smile. Before you read Blowout, you should stock up on your blood pressure medication, maybe schedule some extra time for mindfulness, meditation, or whatever works to keep you from completely losing your mind to absolute rage. Recently a religious friend wondered whether the current president might be the anti-Christ promised in the epistles of John, (and in Islamic lore as well). I suppose Trump would serve as well as any, but on further thought, it seemed to me that, as Trump was very much a puppet of Putin, and thus deserved a demotion, and as Putin was not only running Trump, but has his tentacles around many political and non-political people of importance around the planet, it was Pootee who deserved the title more. On reading Maddow’s book, I am having third thoughts. If Putin is the source of most of the evil in the world (well, certainly a lot of it, anyway) who or what is it that is moving Putin? As you will see in Blowout, much of the mischief Putin has engaged in regarding the USA elections stems from a desire to remove the sanctions imposed after Pootee hacked off the Crimean piece of Ukraine to be absorbed into the Russian Borg. Limitations on the fluidity of the oligarch funds in the West were problematic, particularly as Pootee was the biggest oligarch of them all. But even worse was the limitation placed on western investment in Russia. On its own, and despite its spectacular glut of natural petro/gas resources, Russia is just this side of a failed state, unable to keep up with advances in technology that are now widespread in the West. Russia NEEEEDS the western investment of contemporary extraction technology to retrieve the resources with which it has been blessed, having placed all his national development chips on oil and gas. It is only the nerve of western leaders like Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Joe Biden, with the bi-partisan support of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and other western nations, that saw to it that sanctions were imposed. This kept Pootee from being able to fully exploit Russia’s carbon-based fuel supplies. Not that he or his minions are gonna starve any time soon, but they cannot come close to realizing their ultimate avaricious or nationalistic fantasies without modern means of sucking every last drop out of the ground. And as energy resources have become a primary usable weapon (really, if he let loose the nukes, Russia, and much of the world, would be in cinders in an hour, so not really a practical weapon for immediate needs) in Russian geopolitics, (along with cyber-crime of diverse sorts) he would like to be as well-armed as possible. ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. In order to accommodate the text beyond that, I have moved it to the comments section directly below. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 02, 2019
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Dec 14, 2019
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Nov 02, 2019
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Hardcover
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1982120967
| 9781982120962
| 1982120967
| 3.62
| 175
| Sep 17, 2019
| Sep 17, 2019
|
really liked it
| That is what I believed: that time nibbles away at the future, and in that moment puts the present behind its back. The past retreats as each prese That is what I believed: that time nibbles away at the future, and in that moment puts the present behind its back. The past retreats as each present moment joins it, on and on. Yet that is far too simple. Inside us, time sways backwards and forwards from now to then, here to there, and nothing of it is lost or goes away, but it all hangs everywhere, translucent in the air. Some men turn away, and walk on, saying that the past contains only their former selves and ghosts of people and deeds. Others, like myself, live every day with it. One minute I am in Nieuw Amsterdam, the next pulled on a string into the other time that comes with me, so that here on the Heere Gracht, or as I walk across the marketplace, you and I talk.======================================== Looking back is a game for fools and not one that I like to play.It is 1664. Jan Brunt, a reclusive Dutch bachelor and engineer, lives in what will soon become New York. When he receives a letter announcing the arrival of an old friend, he looks back to the greatest professional and personal challenge of his life, the first his work as an engineer on one of the greatest European development projects of the pre-industrial age, The Great Level, a draining of five hundred square miles of wetland in southeastern England and transformation of it into farmland. The second, the relationship he forms with a local woman while working on that vast endeavor, the love of his life. His story flips back and forth between these two periods. [image] Stella Tillyard - image from BBC Call Upon the Water is an historical novel of a time, during an ongoing English Civil War, when there was much turmoil, and much change happening in the world. It offers powerful portraits of significant places of the era, London of the interregnum, for example, with surreptitious street vendors peddling images of a decapitated King Charles, and a very visible military presence, of the sort one might expect in an occupied country. Another picture, of what is now East Anglia, shows its idyllic appeal as a natural place, in which the residents fight no wars against the natural order that provides them their livelihoods, and then later offers a dark view of the modernization, the denaturing of the place, with the use of hordes of slave laborers, prisoners of war from England’s ongoing battles. We get a look at 1664 New York, well, Niew Amsterdam, Manatus Eylandt, as the Dutch development of it grows northward, when Wall Street was still a wall, and the swampy edges of the island, as well as many wet inland spots beckoned the real estate developers of the time, and provided ample employment for an experienced Dutch engineer. We witness its handover to the English, who rename it for a crown favorite. And we get a look at the Virginia of the time, heavy with indentured labor, not yet so heavy with slaves. It appears that in the latter 17th century, every place is in need of draining, and conversion of wet land at the edges of solid land is de rigeur for the advancement of certain sorts of civilization, regardless of how that land provided for the residents, who are regarded as primitives, whether they are English fenlanders or Native Americans. Colonialism both at home and abroad requires denigration of the displaced residents. [image] The fens - image from The Guardian Eliza is one such. During his early paddling through the vast area to be redesigned in The Great Level, Jan comes across a group of local women bathing. One disrobes as he draws near, unaware. Virginal Janny is shocked So I see her as I have never seen a woman, her whole nakedness, half in my plain sight, half reflected in the water. And in the same instant, or so it feels, she lifts her head and sees me there. Her furious eyes strip me of everything and make me as naked as herself.Well, not quite. Mortified Janny is smitten at the first instant of seeing his personal siren. When I look up I see the mere, the water and the sky, all unchanged. But I know that everything is altered and translated. I spin the coracle, work abandoned and paddle back to Ely, heavy with whatever is inside me. Guy never had a chance. Of course, he is bewitched in the way many a young man can be. (I was young once, I know) From that day on I live a different life. Something has happened to me…straight away I accept and ingest it. The woman I saw, who saw me, has taken up residence inside me… They begin to encounter each other on the water, then closer, then closer, then, well, you know, they become an item. Each has something to teach the other, she the ways of the fenfolk, who make use of the bounty of their watery land. Like Professor Doolittle, although not to win a bet, he teaches her to read, write, very much at her request. He is making her over, as his company is making over the land. But she is no passive recipient. He teaches her also how to measure, in essence how to be an engineer. One might see Eliza not only as a siren figure but as a personification of the land itself. From that day the sun shines on everything in the world. It feels to me as if I have a new knowledge, and that the change that came over me when you first fixed me with your glance was the beginning of it. This knowledge is not from a person or a book. It is a knowledge of what is, neither sacred nor profane, but just the world itself.Already open to such vision, he notes more and more of the nature of the place as he spends more time with Eliza. Stand still in a full silence and it’s loud with noises. A heron takes flight; he creaks like a ship in sail. Ducks scuffle in the reeds. I hear the beat of wings, the movement of creatures in the grass, water rippling, and the wind that accompanies me everywhere, sighing and roaring. Nature, that seems so quiet, pours out its songs. Even in the darkness there is a velvet purr of sound, of moles underground and field mice above.One of the powerful elements of the novel is the portrayal of Eliza as a powerful woman, not only surviving in the perilous world of men, but using the knowledge she gains to survive the challenges she faces on two continents, and to secure what she wants from the universe, and maybe take a shot or two at what she perceives as dark forces. One of the lesser elements of the book is the static nature of Jan. He is a bit stiff, personally, while possessing a naturalist’s feel for the untrammeled world. He has some notions of the sort of life he would like to build for himself, but seems unable to adapt to changes in his circumstances, remaining withdrawn and solitary. I hoped for more development of Jan’s character. Both Jan and Eliza are mostly about business, but Eliza seems much the livelier character of the two. Jan goes through little character development, only from a young engineer to an experienced and confident one. He remains stand-offish, and sinks into the swamp of his unwillingness to act. [image] The fens - image from The Guardian They share an appreciation for the beauty of the land, whether the fenlands of the Great Level or the new, exciting lands of the New World. Those are lyrical passages. This is a novel of man in and versus nature, of colonialism at home and abroad, of both people and landscapes being subdued by political and monetary forces. Land as a source of power and freedom is central. Consideration is given to how one perceives time, Jan holding to a notion that time is a flexible thing, that one can inhabit multiple times simultaneously. This is contrasted with a New World perspective, that disdains any sort of rearward vision, and focuses on material success. While Jan’s story makes up the bulk of the book, as he addresses his story to Eliza, she gets a chance to narrate towards the back of the book. I would have preferred to have seen their perspectives alternated, instead of being presented so separately, and would have liked learning much more about Eliza’s life before her home turf was so assaulted. A greater balance between their two tales would have been most welcome. There are elements of excitement and danger, as the prisoners forced to work on the Great Level are less than willing, but are held in check by a dark sort who would look perfectly lovely in an SS uniform. The locals, as well, are not ecstatic about seeing their entire way of life bulldozed out of existence, and do not all endure it peacefully. Eliza’s experience is rich with peril, and we want her to find a way to survive. Bottom line is that Call Upon the Water is a fascinating look at several places at a time in history most of us do not think about or see much in our diverse readings and entertainments. It is a worthwhile read for that alone. It offers a thoughtful look at the appeal of both nature untrammeled and the satisfying power of taming landscape, counterflows within individuals, as well as in the larger context. The love story is wonderful, for a time. But Jan seemed, despite his lyrical feelings for nature, just too withheld. You can rub two sticks together, but there will not always be a spark. There was one here, for a while, but after the initial heat, the ember never graduated to flame. That said, there is much to like here. And it probably won’t drain all your resources to check it out. In the summer I may paddle on for days. I catch fish and travel as the wildmen do until I reach the far end of the island where it breaks into numerous inlets and beaches. Then I walk down to the open ocean and feel myself to be not a man but a part of nature, as is a star, or a dolphin that leaps for joy out in the bay. Far away round our earth lies the old world, while here I stand on the new. Waves rush up to my feet and then pull back, marbled with sand and foam. Review first posted – October 11, 2019 Publication dates -----UK – July 5, 2018 – as The Great Level - by Chato Windus -----USA – September 17, 2019 – by Atria Books =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and GR pages Her personal site is not particularly current. Tillyard is a historian, best known for her bio of the Lennox Sisters, The Aristocrats, which was made into a very successful mini-series in 1999. In addition to her historical works, Tillyard published her first novel, Tides of War, in 2011. Items of Interest ----- STREET PLAN OF NEW AMSTERDAM AND COLONIAL NEW YORK. - from the NYC Landmarks Preservation commission -----The Guardian - ‘Weirder than any other landscape’: a wild walk in the Fens - by Patrick Barkham -----Evening News - Norwich raised historian to release new book - by Rosanna Elliott The author said: “Growing up in Norwich I was certainly aware of the fens, and I remember passing Ely often on the way to visit my grandparents in Cambridge. The great skies of East Anglia have always been inside me, and I still love flat landscapes and marshes....more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Sep 18, 2019
|
Sep 30, 2019
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Sep 28, 2019
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Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
0701183195
| 9780701183196
| 0701183195
| 3.74
| 195
| unknown
| Aug 28, 2018
|
really liked it
| That is what I believed: that time nibbles away at the future, and in that moment puts the present behind its back. The past retreats as each prese That is what I believed: that time nibbles away at the future, and in that moment puts the present behind its back. The past retreats as each present moment joins it, on and on. Yet that is far too simple. Inside us, time sways backwards and forwards from now to then, here to there, and nothing of it is lost or goes away, but it all hangs everywhere, translucent in the air. Some men turn away, and walk on, saying that the past contains only their former selves and ghosts of people and deeds. Others, like myself, live every day with it. One minute I am in Nieuw Amsterdam, the next pulled on a string into the other time that comes with me, so that here on the Heere Gracht, or as I walk across the marketplace, you and I talk.======================================== Looking back is a game for fools and not one that I like to play.It is 1664. Jan Brunt, a reclusive Dutch bachelor and engineer, lives in what will soon become New York. When he receives a letter announcing the arrival of an old friend, he looks back to the greatest professional and personal challenge of his life, the first his work as an engineer on one of the greatest European development projects of the pre-industrial age, The Great Level, a draining of five hundred square miles of wetland in southeastern England and transformation of it into arable farmland. The second, the relationship he forms with a local woman while working on that vast endeavor, the love of his life. His story flips back and forth between these two periods. [image] Stella Tillyard - image from BBC The Great Level is an historical novel of a time, during an ongoing English Civil War, when there was much turmoil, and much change happening in the world. It offers powerful portraits of significant places of the era, London of the interregnum, for example, with surreptitious street vendors peddling images of a decapitated King Charles, and a very visible military presence, of the sort one might expect in an occupied country. Another picture, of what is now East Anglia, shows its idyllic appeal as a natural place, in which the residents fight no wars against the natural order that provides them their livelihoods, and then later offers a dark view of the modernization, the denaturing of the place, with the use of hordes of slave laborers, prisoners of war from England’s ongoing battles. We get a look at 1664 New York, well, Niew Amsterdam, Manatus Eylandt, as the Dutch development of it grows northward, when Wall Street was still a wall, and the swampy edges of the island, as well as many wet inland spots beckoned the real estate developers of the time, and provided ample employment for an experienced Dutch engineer. We witness its handover to the English, who rename it for a crown favorite. And we get a look at the Virginia of the time, heavy with indentured labor, not yet so heavy with slaves. It appears that in the latter 17th century, every place is in need of draining, and conversion of wet land at the edges of solid land is de rigeur for the advancement of certain sorts of civilization, regardless of how that land provided for the residents, who are regarded as primitives, whether they are English fenlanders or Native Americans. Colonialism both at home and abroad requires denigration of the displaced residents. [image] The fens - image from The Guardian Eliza is one such. During his early paddling through the vast area to be redesigned in The Great Level, Jan comes across a group of local women bathing. One disrobes as he draws near, unaware. Virginal Janny is shocked So I see her as I have never seen a woman, her whole nakedness, half in my plain sight, half reflected in the water. And in the same instant, or so it feels, she lifts her head and sees me there. Her furious eyes strip me of everything and make me as naked as herself.Well, not quite. Mortified Janny is smitten at the first instant of seeing his personal siren. When I look up I see the mere, the water and the sky, all unchanged. But I know that everything is altered and translated. I spin the coracle, work abandoned and paddle back to Ely, heavy with whatever is inside me. Guy never had a chance. Of course, he is bewitched in the way many a young man can be. (I was young once, I know) From that day on I live a different life. Something has happened to me…straight away I accept and ingest it. The woman I saw, who saw me, has taken up residence inside me… They begin to encounter each other on the water, then closer, then closer, then, well, you know, they become an item. Each has something to teach the other, she the ways of the fenfolk, who make use of the bounty of their watery land. Like Professor Doolittle, although not to win a bet, he teaches her to read, write, very much at her request. He is making her over, as his company is making over the land. But she is no passive recipient. He teaches her also how to measure, in essence how to be an engineer. One might see Eliza not only as a siren figure but as a personification of the land itself. From that day the sun shines on everything in the world. It feels to me as if I have a new knowledge, and that the change that came over me when you first fixed me with your glance was the beginning of it. This knowledge is not from a person or a book. It is a knowledge of what is, neither sacred nor profane, but just the world itself.Already open to such vision, he notes more and more of the nature of the place as he spends more time with Eliza. Stand still in a full silence and it’s loud with noises. A heron takes flight; he creaks like a ship in sail. Ducks scuffle in the reeds. I hear the beat of wings, the movement of creatures in the grass, water rippling, and the wind that accompanies me everywhere, sighing and roaring. Nature, that seems so quiet, pours out its songs. Even in the darkness there is a velvet purr of sound, of moles underground and field mice above.One of the powerful elements of the novel is the portrayal of Eliza as a powerful woman, not only surviving in the perilous world of men, but using the knowledge she gains to survive the challenges she faces on two continents, and to secure what she wants from the universe, and maybe take a shot or two at what she perceives as dark forces. One of the lesser elements of the book is the static nature of Jan. He is a bit stiff, personally, while possessing a naturalist’s feel for the untrammeled world. He has some notions of the sort of life he would like to build for himself, but seems unable to adapt to changes in his circumstances, remaining withdrawn and solitary. I hoped for more development of Jan’s character. Both Jan and Eliza are mostly about business, but Eliza seems much the livelier character of the two. Jan goes through little character development, only from a young engineer to an experienced and confident one. He remains stand-offish, and sinks into the swamp of his unwillingness to act. [image] The fens - image from The Guardian They share an appreciation for the beauty of the land, whether the fenlands of the Great Level or the new, exciting lands of the New World. Those are lyrical passages. This is a novel of man in and versus nature, of colonialism at home and abroad, of both people and landscapes being subdued by political and monetary forces. Land as a source of power and freedom is central. Consideration is given to how one perceives time, Jan holding to a notion that time is a flexible thing, that one can inhabit multiple times simultaneously. This is contrasted with a New World perspective, that disdains any sort of rearward vision, and focuses on material success. While Jan’s story makes up the bulk of the book, as he addresses his story to Eliza, she gets a chance to narrate towards the back of the book. I would have preferred to have seen their perspectives alternated, instead of being presented so separately, and would have liked learning much more about Eliza’s life before her home turf was so assaulted. A greater balance between their two tales would have been most welcome. There are elements of excitement and danger, as the prisoners forced to work on the Great Level are less than willing, but are held in check by a dark sort who would look perfectly lovely in an SS uniform. The locals, as well, are not ecstatic about seeing their entire way of life bulldozed out of existence, and do not all endure it peacefully. Eliza’s experience is rich with peril, and we want her to find a way to survive. Bottom line is that The Great Level is a fascinating look at several places at a time in history most of us do not think about or see much in our diverse readings and entertainments. It is a worthwhile read for that alone. It offers a thoughtful look at the appeal of both nature untrammeled and the satisfying power of taming landscape, counterflows within individuals, as well as in the larger context. The love story is wonderful, for a time. But Jan seemed, despite his lyrical feelings for nature, just too withheld. You can rub two sticks together, but there will not always be a spark. There was one here, for a while, but after the initial heat, the ember never graduated to flame. That said, there is much to like here. And it probably won’t drain all your resources to check it out. In the summer I may paddle on for days. I catch fish and travel as the wildmen do until I reach the far end of the island where it breaks into numerous inlets and beaches. Then I walk down to the open ocean and feel myself to be not a man but a part of nature, as is a star, or a dolphin that leaps for joy out in the bay. Far away round our earth lies the old world, while here I stand on the new. Waves rush up to my feet and then pull back, marbled with sand and foam. Review posted – October 11, 2019 Publication dates -----UK – July 5, 2018 - by Chato Windus -----USA – September 17, 2019 – as Call Upon the Water - by Atria Books =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and GR pages Her personal site is not particularly current. Tillyard is a historian, best known for her bio of the Lennox Sisters, The Aristocrats, which was made into a very successful mini-series in 1999. In addition to her historical works, Tillyard published her first novel, Tides of War, in 2011. Items of Interest ----- STREET PLAN OF NEW AMSTERDAM AND COLONIAL NEW YORK. - from the NYC Landmarks Preservation commission -----The Guardian - ‘Weirder than any other landscape’: a wild walk in the Fens - by Patrick Barkham -----Evening News - Norwich raised historian to release new book - by Rosanna Elliott The author said: “Growing up in Norwich I was certainly aware of the fens, and I remember passing Ely often on the way to visit my grandparents in Cambridge. The great skies of East Anglia have always been inside me, and I still love flat landscapes and marshes....more |
Notes are private!
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Sep 18, 2019
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Sep 30, 2019
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Sep 28, 2019
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Hardcover
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my rating |
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4.31
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it was amazing
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Sep 30, 2023
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Oct 03, 2023
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4.16
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it was amazing
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Aug 06, 2022
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Aug 10, 2022
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4.15
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really liked it
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Jul 19, 2022
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Jul 27, 2022
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4.37
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it was amazing
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Apr 17, 2022
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Apr 19, 2022
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4.09
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it was amazing
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Dec 27, 2021
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Dec 27, 2021
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3.50
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liked it
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May 08, 2021
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Dec 17, 2021
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4.39
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really liked it
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Sep 27, 2021
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Sep 29, 2021
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4.34
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it was amazing
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Aug 09, 2021
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Aug 02, 2021
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4.06
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really liked it
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May 08, 2021
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May 17, 2021
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3.79
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it was amazing
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Feb 03, 2021
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Jan 04, 2021
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3.73
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it was amazing
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Jan 04, 2021
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Dec 10, 2020
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3.82
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it was amazing
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Sep 05, 2020
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Sep 05, 2020
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3.97
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it was amazing
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Aug 11, 2020
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Aug 10, 2020
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4.11
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it was amazing
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Jul 18, 2020
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Jul 20, 2020
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3.97
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it was amazing
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Feb 24, 2020
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Feb 24, 2020
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4.15
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it was amazing
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Feb 11, 2020
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Feb 10, 2020
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3.93
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liked it
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Dec 29, 2019
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Dec 25, 2019
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4.35
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it was amazing
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Dec 14, 2019
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Nov 02, 2019
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3.62
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really liked it
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Sep 30, 2019
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Sep 28, 2019
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3.74
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really liked it
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Sep 30, 2019
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Sep 28, 2019
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