No place affords a more striking conviction
of the vanity of human hopes
than a public library.
Samuel Johnson,
March 23, 1751,
the Rambler
Amazon Lemmings Effect
In no way one can blindly rely on Amazon ratings (or any similar ratings). Amazon rating
while providing interesting information often are subject to so called "Lemming Effect" when people
rate highly a book that is mediocre at best (just look on reviews of JavaScript: The Definitive Guide
or Learning Perl. In this case several good reviews incite conformists to say a couple of nice words
about the book that they probably own but that they either never read or they lack the ability to compare
books on the subject due to some other factor.
Bad books from a respectable publisher or a known author sometimes
have many excellent reviews on Amazon (Lemmings effect )
At the same time many really good books (for example Learning Korn Shell) are underrated
on Amazon with a lot of reviews that belong to the category described above, only with minus sign.
You also need to understand that the value of the book depends on the level of the reader
and only really brilliant books (for example TAOCP) can bypass this vast
diversity of experiences of the readers.
Evaluating a book before buying
If you are still thinking about buying a book, do yourself a favor, when you're at the book store
look in the index or table of contents of this book and then browse the book and read at least one,
important for you, chapter before spending any money. If you still have the same level of understanding
as before the reading and the chapter does not contain interesting ideas or badly written then probably
this is not the book you are shooting for. Then take another book and keep doing this until you find
one that really excels in explaining this important for you concept.
If you cannot browse the book yourself in a bookstore, then you should try to grade the book indirectly
using other sources (this is less reliable but at least helps to avoid blunders):
Reviews -- You can start with Amazon reviews as they are the most available. Here
I recommend you read negative reviews if the book is rated highly on Amazon and positive reviews
otherwise (see also Lemming Effect) above). You can usually spot one or two non-conformist reviews
that five you some assurance that the authors really read the book before writing the review and
they understand the subject enough to be able to objectively rate the book. Other approach is to
look on the books that have at least 3 reviews and ignore the first review (often from the author
friend ;-) and too glaring or too negative reviews.
Good books have usually good review from Amazon readers, but you need to ignore trashing reviews
as well as too positive (or false-positives; the first review for the book often belongs to
this category ;-). Bad books sometimes also have good reviews, so good reviews from Amazon.com are
not sufficient for making a right decision about the value of the book.
You can also take into account (but do not believe completely) reviews from other sources like
DrDobbs Electronic Reviews of Computer Books (ERCB),
but your mileage can vary. Sometimes they recommend very weak books.
Association of C & C++
Users book review section contains a lot of reviews and probably you can dig out a useful information
about the value of the book in comparison to a similar books on the subject ( I checked several reviews
about average books that I own -- and found that most were too positive, so beware). The site
also contains a good
publishers
index.
The sample chapter (that's why parallel publishing is so important, especially for readers
outside US -- I do not recommend to buy a book without a sample chapter available form the Internet
-- that's too risky if you are outside US). Availability varies from publisher to publisher,
but now almost all publishers provide one chapter on the WEB. You can find publisher WEB site using
my page Computer Books Publishers. In addition
one can check information about the book at
www.fatbrain.com. This is a specialized computer
bookstore and it often have more information about the book than
www.amazon.com. Among publishers:
O'Reilly usually provides one sample
chapter for the book and that is big advantage and big plus for O'Reilly as a publisher. They
provide all examples via the WEB site too. Also they sometimes produce CD ROM with older
editions of less important books, but later this activity almost stopped as even in this moderate
form it does undermines their core business.
Wrox Press also does a great job of providing
readers with a sample chapter and all examples from the book through their Web site. They see
readers support as important as the quality of the product, but they seldom provide a full text
of the book electronically or on CD (I know only about one such book: Deiter Lange noted in a
comment about this page " at least for Wrox's publication "JavaScript Programmer's
Examples from the book. If examples are unavailable do not buy the book. Period. If examples
are available download and analyze them: they can say a lot about the quality of the book. One problem
with writing good programming texts is finding good examples. If the examples are both fun and insightful
that's a very good sign. You can try to analyze the correctness of examples by running them. As you
encounter problems you might deeper understand the real level of the author.
Table of contents (TOC). TOC can gives a general impression of the quality of the book.
Not only the titles of chapters and chapter divisions are important. Number of pages for devoted
to each topic provides a very valuable information too: you can see if the book contains enough information
about the things that you expect to learn and you can compare the level of coverage with the
other book, if any. For example if one book covers some tool in 10 pages and the other book
in 50 pages the value of the second book will be higher, if this tool (say, Sendmail) is very
important to you.
Books with titles that includes the word Bible
are often pretty weak and belong to the "make money fast" category . No respectable author
would consider himself to be a God :-) Every time I see a book named "XXX Bible" (Unix
Bible, Java Bible, Javascript Bible, etc). I think that such name is misleading as for the
level of complexity and weirdness of the subject and from marketing standpoint it might be
better to replace this title with a title "XXX Kamasutra." :-)
Errata. If the book is not very recent, it's interesting to check the errata. The work
authors/publishers did in this area is directly proportional to the value of such a book. If there
is no errata one year after a book publication I would abstain from buying the book unless there
is no alternatives or all alternatives are equally bad.
The name of the publisher. It still has some validity and other things equal books
from O'Reilly of Prentice Hall might probably be better than Sibex ;-). But that's only on
average. Each of the major publishers published a lot of junk (book inflation). For example Prentice
Hall now regularly publish extremely weak books like
Solaris Security. McGraw-Hill published real junk like
Tcp-Ip Complete. Some O'Reilly's books like
Learning Perl on Win32, JavaScript The Definitive
Guide are suspect. Newcomers like Wrox Press, Manning are generally
worth a look, but as they became more entrenched, the natural process of selling junk on the strength
of the brand name "unleash" itself...
O'Reilly remains one of the top publishers (Essential System Administration,
Learning Korn Shell, and some others are really worth
their money). But for example in Perl they face strong competition: the best introductory Perl book
published (Beginning
Perl ) is not from O'Reilly.
All-in-all the publisher name now means less that before
Now the publisher name now means less that before.
Availability of the e-text. Often a mediocre book with e-text available is as useful as
a good book because you can benefit from the availability of the electronic text is many way (search,
ability to modify chapters, add your own examples and actively work with the book in many ways).
If two books have approximately the same quality then the book that has a full electronic text available,
is preferable (scanning of the book is a very time consuming activity unless you destroy the book
and use a scanner with an automatic feed -- some HP scanners have that capability) ).
Sometimes a publisher does not provide a copy of the book on CD, but it sells a separate CD with
the full text of several books including this particular book. For example most O'Reilly older books
on Perl, Unix and networking have electronic version available
on separate CDs. That's great and some faults can be forgiven.
But in most cases you always can find a better book.
Availability of the author web-site. Good authors care about their readers and provide
some form of the web-site support. Errata and examples are usually are available form such sites
too.
Hardcover $39.38 18 Used from $11.17 4 New from $39.38 1 Collectible from $547.00
Paperback $17.99 13 Used from $9.99 14 New from $13.20
Mass Market Paperback $15.01 4 Used from $9.91 4 New from $10.05
Antonio García Martínez talks with Steven Levy Steven Levy is the editor-in-chief of Backchannel.
Steven Levy (SL): Antonio, why did you write this book?
Antonio García Martínez (AGM): You know, that's a good question because many would think that I'm committing career suicide by
writing it. One of the most notable things about Silicon Valley is that nobody is writing those histories. Everyone in Silicon Valley
lives in what I like to call 'the eternal present'. It's the urgent now of the next start-up, or the next cool technology or the
next fundraising round or the next media event. No one ever pulls back and thinks: "What are they going to think of us in ten years
or a hundred years?" So at the very highest, noblest level, recording that history is why I wrote the book.
SL: You did it, as you mentioned, in a pretty unmediated fashion, one which is probably going to ruffle some feathers. We were
talking at one point earlier about doing pieces of this on Backchannel, and I was going to call this series 'You'll Never Eat Free
Lunch in This Town Again'. Do you think you are going to be blackballed?
AGM: Oh, yeah. I think there are going to be one of two reactions to the book. One is from the Facebook founder, early employee,
or anyone really vested in and part of the Silicon Valley establishment, who are going to be extraordinarily antagonistic to it.
And then I think there's going to be the reaction of the mid-level or junior-level Facebook employee (what I was at Facebook), or
the scarred veteran of many a start-up who is not believing in the fairy tale anymore -- they are going to read it and see what is
basically a portrait of their own lives and laugh like hell.
SL: Your view of Silicon Valley seems to be a kind of den of scoundrels, and you don't exempt yourself from this. Yet there's
a moment late in the book where you drop that pose for a second and say how you were drinking the Kool-Aid yourself. How swept up
did you get in the Silicon Valley ethos while at the same time looking at a lot of things around you with a jaundiced eye?
AGM: Like I say in the book, "Inside every cynic lives a heartbroken idealist". So if I look at the Silicon Valley world with
such a jaundiced eye, it's precisely because I at one point believed in it. I've definitely hammed up this persona of the swaggering
rapscallion running amok through the Silicon Valley world, which I kind of did for a number of years. But that rapscallion did believe.
I wore a little Facebook fleece every day, I lived at Facebook, I believed in the mission, I was as much a rank-and-file trooper
as anybody else. Of course, I was disabused of that opinion as I saw the reality. But I absolutely was a believer at one point, no
question.
Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Review An Amazon Best Book of July 2016: If you think you know the back-story of the founding of
Facebook because you saw The Social Network, think again: Antonio Garcia Martinez's Chaos Monkeys tells a more complete and sometimes
darker story about the founding and development of Mark Zuckerberg's multi-billion-dollar invention. This is not a whodunit (we know
who did – Zuckerberg, those rowing twins, and assorted Harvard frenemies) so much as a procedural, a chronicle by the data-guru who
was eventually forced out of Facebook (he went to Twitter) – but not before gathering some pretty interesting social data of his
own: about Zuckerberg, about other Silicon valley "chaos monkeys," and about the culture that spawned all of them. Others who have
toiled in tech will recognize some universal truths: for example, that despite the great wealth, most are not in it for the money
so much as the mission; Facebook, Garcia Martinez asserts, was a "church of a new religion," its practitioners true believers. While
there may be a little TMI for the casual reader, there are enough specific scenes and characters – Sheryl Sandberg included, of course
-- that, geek or not, you can't help but be fascinated. Me, I can't help but wonder how many "likes" you'd get if you posted about
it on your FB page --Sara Nelson, The Amazon Book Review Review "An irresistible and indispensable 360-degree guide to the new technology
establishment.... A must-read." -- Jonathan A. Knee, New York Times
"Reckless and rollicking... perceptive and funny and brave.... The resulting view of the Valley's craziness, self-importance and
greed isn't pretty. But it's one that most of us have never seen before and aren't likely to forget." -- Washington Post
"Michael Lewis was never a top Wall Street bond salesman, but in Liar's Poker he captured an era. Chaos Monkeys aims to do the
same for Silicon Valley, and bracingly succeeds." -- New York Times Book Review
"Brilliant." -- Financial Times
"This year's best non-business book about business.... Garcia Martinez is a real writer.... A classic tale, well told." -- Techcrunch
"There are some books that are just too good to miss.... In his insider-tells-all book, García Martínez discusses everything from
goofy stories to cultural secrets about some of the country's most powerful and influential businesses." -- Atlantic
"Incisive.... The most fun business book I have read this year.... Clearly there will be people who hate this book -- which is
probably one of the things that makes it such a great read." -- Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times
"[García Martínez] is, by his own account, a dissolute character.... He is nonetheless, by the end of his account, a winning antihero,
a rebel against Silicon Valley's culture of nonconformist conformity.... The reader can't help rooting for him." -- Jacob Weisberg,
New York Review of Books
"Unlike most founding narratives that flow out of the Valley, Chaos Monkeys dives into the unburnished, day-to-day realities:
the frantic pivots, the enthusiastic ass-kissing, the excruciating internal politics.... [García] can be rude, but he's shrewd, too."
-- Bloomberg Businessweek
"An unvarnished account of Silicon Valley." -- CBS This Morning
"Romps through Martínez's wild trajectory from Wall Streeter to pre-IPO Facebook employee, with the dramatic sale of his Y Combinator-backed
ad-tech startup (to Twitter) in between." -- Jillian D'Onfirio Business Insider
"Traces the evolution of social media and online marketing and reveals how it's become a part of our daily lives and how it will
affect our future." -- Leonard Lopate, WNYC
"If you're in a startup or even plan to sue one, Chaos Monkeys is the book to read." -- John Biggs, TechCrunch
"This gossipy insider account from the former Twitter adviser, Facebook product manager, and start-up CEO dishes dirt while also
explaining the ins and outs of Silicon Valley." -- Neal Wyatt, Library Journal
"[Garcia Martinez] reads like a philosopher and historian, the exact travel guide you'd want to walk you through the inner workings
of Facebook. His tell-all memoir is the best writing out there on one of the world's most powerful companies. And he even manages
to make the ins and outs of online advertising fascinating." -- Aarti Shahanti, npr.org
Amazingly accurate coverage of Facebook's internal culture, the good, the bad, and the ugly. (Plus much, much more!)
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazingly accurate coverage of Facebook's internal culture, the good, the bad, and the ugly. (Plus much, much more!) Reviewed
in the United States on July 10, 2016 Verified Purchase I worked at Facebook from 2010 until 2015, and until now I have never
seen the inner machinations as accurately portrayed as they are in 'Chaos Monkeys'. Facebook very carefully maintains a public
relations campaign (almost more internally focused than external) to convince the world it is the best place to work ever. In
reality it is just like any other large company, with plenty of political intrigue, infighting, silo-building, and collateral
damage. Sure, the mini-kitchens have organic bananas, and pistachios that stressed slobby software engineers neither have to shell,
nor leave a pile of shells littered all around the floor... but in reality they are shackled to an oar, pulling to the endless
beat of a drum. Code. Code. Code. It is all here the creepy propaganda, the failed high-profile projects, the surreal manager/staff
relationships, the cultivated cult-like atmosphere, the sharp divide between the have-it-all, and the "hope to have enough to
escape" staff. The bizarro world of inside FB, around the IPO. I was there and experienced many of the same corporate events and
milestones myself. Antonio Garcia Martinez captures it all perfectly.
That's only the last half of the book.
The rest is a tale of escaping from startup hell, making a go at reaching startup heaven, then making deals to salvage it all
when reaching the critical trial-by-fire that every startup must face: die, execute flawlessly, or exit.
There are some who will find the tone, the voice, or the political incorrectness of both to be too harsh to digest. I've already
seen that in a few of the reviews here. To them I say "grow up"... put on your big boy/girl pants and read this for the story.
The tale it tells. The facts it presents. The data with which it backs it all up. Because it is all true. The exposition of complex
systems are described using appropriate, and facile metaphors. Many of the standard Facebook tropes ("stealing/selling your data",
"Zuck is evil", etc.) are explained for the misleading baloney that they are. Best of all it describes how the advertising media
really operates, going back to the dawn of it, and how Facebook, Google, et al are merely extensions of a system that has existed
for two centuries. It is worth the purchase price for that lesson alone, all wrapped in a great, and true story.
For myself, having lived through much of the same experience at Facebook (from onboarding, the devotion, the cynicism, to the
inglorious, frustrated exit bungled by one of the legion of Facebook's incompetent and narcissistic manager corps) I found myself
going from laughter, to nodding agreement, to gut-wrenching bouts of PTSD as I turned the pages of 'Chaos Monkeys'. Now I no longer
have to justify myself to people who ask me why I left Facebook - I can just tell them to read this book, since it explains it
better than I ever could.
Read less 559 people found this helpful >
1.0 out of 5 stars
Whiny Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2019 Verified Purchase The author seems to be a very bitter and acerbic
individual with huge collection of chips on his shoulder, from past coworkers to the capitalism itself. It is rare to encounter
a character in his book to which he doesn't find something contemptuous or negative to say about. Even when describing genuinely
positive things - like courage, loyalty or generosity - he seems to be astonished that these puny humans he despises so much are
capable of such things. I can't remember any character (including the mother of his children) who is described with genuine warmth
and affection, then best he could master is "that person could be useful to me in certain situations".
While the protagonist seems to be entirely driven by monetary incentives, he does not forget to regularly interrupt his quest
for a lengthy tirade about how capitalism is the worst (usually on the way to convince some capitalists to give him some money
so he could participate in capitalist venture and make some money for himself).
The author undoubtedly has a knack for storytelling and a keen eye (usually turned to finding faults in everything he sees),
so there are many interesting and entertaining bits in the book. But the overall negativity and constant droning of the author
about how everything around him is wrong from the mere atoms upwards is really wearing you down. I understand that's sort of "here's
what I am without any makeup, take it or leave it" but I really wish the it wasn't a whiny narcissistic nihilist...
Gethin Darklord 5.0 out of 5 stars
Revelatory epistole from Silicon Valley Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 29, 2018
I really enjoyed this book which falls into two sections: before the author's employment with Facebook and afterwards until
he is fired. Mr Martinez comes across as a very self centred but brilliant techy geek and whilst unappealing as a friend his frank
discussions of his thoughts give an unusual degree of insight into his character; and of those like him. He actually manages to
explain how Facebook makes its money which is something I have never understood before. His assertion they wouldn't share your
data is charmingly Niaive in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal (2019) - the book was written some years before. Ultimately
it takes bravery to write frankly about one's own failures and this makes it distinct from the hagiographies and self congratulatory
books which characterise most business books. An interesting aside is his obvious erudition with well chosen classical quotations
at the head of each chapter. Recommended highly.
Jason 5.0 out of 5 stars
A great insight into Silicon Valley Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 28, 2019
I don't read a great deal as I struggle to find books that capture me, 'Chaos Monkeys' had me within the first few pages.
A great account of Antonio's life chapters from Wall Street to Techie to startup and working with the big boys in Silicon Valley.
Really enjoyed the style of writing, very humorous in places, and great to get an insight into the large techie firms.
Couldn't wait to read more, read the book in a week which is excellent for me!
If you like the world of tech or IT, I recommend you read this book.
R. A. Mansfield 3.0 out of 5 stars
Frustrating and irritating Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 26, 2019
There were parts of this book I enjoyed. The insight into tech start-ups, a brief window into Facebook and the life in San
Francisco were all interesting.
Sadly, these sections were marred by having to 'listen' to Martinez's overblown prose and sense of self-worth.
The self-deprecation doesn't sound genuine and - let's face it - he comes across as a complete tool. Not worth the money
Amazon Customer 5.0 out of 5 stars
Best bio read of the year Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 4, 2020 Verified Purchase
This book had been on my list for a couple of years but I'd kept moving it down because of the gimmicky sounding title. It's
an amazing read, enhanced by the fact I personally know a couple of the people (briefly) mentioned. It presents an inside view
that I don't think is available in print anywhere else. Learnt so much and truly grateful to the author for writing it. If you
work in tech and read anything this year, it should be this.
T. Adshead5.0 out of 5 stars
Liar's Poker for the second tech bubble Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 21, 2018
I cannot recommend this book enough - it reads as well as anything by Michael Lewis, perhaps better in some ways, as it's more
erudite. It puts you in the room of what it's like to work in a start-up, what happens when you sell it, how compensation works
in Silicon Valley and all those details you won't find in hagiographies of Jobs or Zuckerberg. And it really is well written.
"... He defines "wokeism" as a creed that has arisen in America in response to the "moral vacuum" created by the ebbing from public life of faith, patriotism and "the identity we derived from hard work." He argues that notions like "diversity," "equity," "inclusion" and "sustainability" have come to take their place. ..."
"... "Our collective moral insecurities," Mr. Ramaswamy says, "have left us vulnerable" to the blandishments and propaganda of the new political and corporate elites, who are now locked in a cynical "arranged marriage, where each partner has contempt for the other." Each side is getting out of the "trade" something it "could not have gotten alone." ..."
"... Wokeness entered its union with capitalism in the years following the 2008 financial panic and recession. Mr. Ramaswamy believes that conditions were perfect for the match. "We were -- and are -- in the midst of the biggest intergenerational wealth transfer in history," he says. Barack Obama had just been elected the first black president. By the end of the crisis, Americans "were actually pretty jaded with respect to capitalism. Corporations were the bad guys. The old left wanted to take money from corporations and give it to poor people." ..."
"... The birth of wokeism was a godsend to corporations, Mr. Ramaswamy says. It helped defang the left. "Wokeism lent a lifeline to the people who were in charge of the big banks. They thought, 'This stuff is easy!' " They applauded diversity and inclusion, appointed token female and minority directors, and "mused about the racially disparate impact of climate change." So, in Mr. Ramaswamy's narrative, "a bunch of big banks got together with a bunch of millennials, birthed woke capitalism, and then put Occupy Wall Street up for adoption." Now, in Mr. Ramaswamy's tart verdict, "big business makes money by critiquing itself." ..."
"... Davos is "the Woke Vatican," Mr. Ramaswamy says; Al Gore and Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock , are "its archbishops." CEOs "further down the chain" -- he mentions James Quincey of Coca-Cola , Ed Bastian of Delta , Marc Benioff of Salesforce , John Donahoe of Nike and Alan Jope of Unilever -- are its "cardinals." ..."
"... He describes this sort of corporate imposition -- "a market force supplanting open political debate to settle the essence of political questions" -- as one of the "defining challenges" America faces today. "If democracy means anything," he adds, "it means living in a one-person-one-vote system, not a one-dollar-one-vote system." Voters' voices "are unadjusted by the number of dollars we wield in the marketplace." Open debate in the public square is "our uniquely American mechanism" of settling political questions. He likens the woke-corporate silencing of debate as akin to the "old-world European model, where a small group of elites gets in a room and decides what's good for everyone else." ..."
"... The wokeism-capitalism embrace, Mr. Ramaswamy says, was replicated in Silicon Valley. Over the past few years, "Big Tech effectively agreed to censor -- or 'moderate' -- content that the woke movement didn't like. But they didn't do it for free." In return, the left "agreed to look the other way when it comes to leaving Silicon Valley's monopoly power intact." This arrangement is "working out masterfully" for both sides. ..."
"... Coca-Cola follows the same playbook, he says: "It's easier for them to issue statements about voting laws in Georgia, or to train their employees on how to 'be less white,' than it is to publicly reckon with its role in fueling a nationwide epidemic of diabetes and obesity -- including in the black communities they profess to care about so much." (In a statement, Coca-Cola apologized for the "be less white" admonition and said that while it was "accessible through our company training platform," it "was not a part of our training curriculum.") ..."
"... Nike finds it much easier to write checks to Black Lives Matter and condemn America's history of slavery, Mr. Ramaswamy says, even as it relies on "slave labor" today to sell "$250 sneakers to black kids in the inner city who can't afford to buy books for school." All the while, Black Lives Matter "neuters the police in a way that sacrifices even more black lives." (Nike has said in a statement that its code of conduct prohibits any use of forced labor and "we have been engaging with multi-stakeholder working groups to assess collective solutions that will help preserve the integrity of our global supply chains.") ..."
"... Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at New York University Law School's Classical Liberal Institute. ..."
"... Seems to me in a nutshell he is saying that these woke corporations are all hypocrites. No surprise there hypocrisy is a defining characteristic of the woke left and you need to assume that characteristic yourself to be able to work within their bounds. ..."
"... Wokeists argue that theirs is not a religion because it doesn't center on a transcendent being. I see Wokeism as a religion that gathers multiple Secularist sects into a big tent. These sects include Environmentalism, Genderism, Anti-Racism, and more. ..."
"... One thing all religions share in common is the elevation of questionable premises to unassailable truths which they defend with religious zeal. Some questionable premises elevated to unassailable truths by Wokeism are that humans are making the Earth uninhabitable, gender is an individual choice, and race is the most important human characteristic. There are more. ..."
A self-made multimillionaire who founded a biotech company at 28, Vivek Ramaswamy is every
inch the precocious overachiever. He tells me he attended law school while he was in sixth
grade. He's joking, in his own earnest manner. His father, an aircraft engineer at General
Electric, had decided to get a law degree at night school. Vivek sat in on the classes with
him, so he could keep his dad company on the long car rides to campus and back -- a very Indian
filial act.
"I was probably the only person my age who'd heard of Antonin Scalia, " Mr. Ramaswamy, 35,
says in a Zoom call from his home in West Chester, Ohio. His father, a political liberal, would
often rage on the way home from class about "some Scalia opinion." Mr. Ramaswamy reckons that
this was when he began to form his own political ideas. A libertarian in high school, he
switched to being conservative at Harvard in "an act of rebellion" against the politics he
found there. That conservatism drove him to step down in January as CEO at Roivant Sciences --
the drug-development company that made him rich -- and write "Woke, Inc," a book that takes a
scathing look at "corporate America's social-justice scam." (It will be published in
August.)
Mr. Ramaswamy recently watched the movie "Spotlight," which tells the story of how reporters
at the Boston Globe exposed misconduct (specifically, sexual abuse) by Catholic priests in the
early 2000s. "My goal in 'Woke, Inc.' is to do the same thing with respect to the Church of
Wokeism." He defines "wokeism" as a creed that has arisen in America in response to the "moral
vacuum" created by the ebbing from public life of faith, patriotism and "the identity we
derived from hard work." He argues that notions like "diversity," "equity," "inclusion" and
"sustainability" have come to take their place.
"Our collective moral insecurities," Mr. Ramaswamy says, "have left us vulnerable" to the
blandishments and propaganda of the new political and corporate elites, who are now locked in a
cynical "arranged marriage, where each partner has contempt for the other." Each side is
getting out of the "trade" something it "could not have gotten alone."
Wokeness entered its union with capitalism in the years following the 2008 financial panic
and recession. Mr. Ramaswamy believes that conditions were perfect for the match. "We were --
and are -- in the midst of the biggest intergenerational wealth transfer in history," he says.
Barack Obama had just been elected the first black president. By the end of the crisis,
Americans "were actually pretty jaded with respect to capitalism. Corporations were the bad
guys. The old left wanted to take money from corporations and give it to poor people."
The birth of wokeism was a godsend to corporations, Mr. Ramaswamy says. It helped defang the
left. "Wokeism lent a lifeline to the people who were in charge of the big banks. They thought,
'This stuff is easy!' " They applauded diversity and inclusion, appointed token female and
minority directors, and "mused about the racially disparate impact of climate change." So, in
Mr. Ramaswamy's narrative, "a bunch of big banks got together with a bunch of millennials,
birthed woke capitalism, and then put Occupy Wall Street up for adoption." Now, in Mr.
Ramaswamy's tart verdict, "big business makes money by critiquing itself."
Mr. Ramaswamy regards Klaus Schwab, founder and CEO of the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland, as the "patron saint of wokeism" for his relentless propagation of "stakeholder
capitalism" -- the view that the unspoken bargain in the grant to corporations of limited
liability is that they "must do social good on the side."
Davos is "the Woke Vatican," Mr. Ramaswamy says; Al Gore and Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock , are "its
archbishops." CEOs "further down the chain" -- he mentions James Quincey of Coca-Cola , Ed Bastian of Delta , Marc Benioff of
Salesforce , John
Donahoe of Nike and
Alan Jope of Unilever
-- are its "cardinals."
Mr. Ramaswamy says that "unlike the investigative 'Spotlight' team at the Boston Globe, I'm
a whistleblower, not a journalist. But the church analogy holds strong." He paraphrases a line
in the movie: "It takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a village to abuse one. In
the case of my book, the child I'm concerned about is American democracy."
In league with the woke left, corporate America "uses force" as a substitute for open
deliberation and debate, Mr. Ramaswamy says. "There's the sustainability accounting standards
board of BlackRock, which effectively demands that in order to win an investment from
BlackRock, the largest asset-manager in the world, you must abide by the standards of that
board."
Was the board put in place by the owners of the trillions of dollars of capital that Mr.
Fink manages? Of course not, Mr. Ramaswamy says. "And yet he's actually using his seat of
corporate power to sidestep debate about questions like environmentalism or diversity on
boards."
The irrepressible Mr. Ramaswamy presses on with another example. Goldman Sachs , he says with obvious relish,
"is a very Davos-fitting example." At the 2020 World Economic Forum, Goldman Sachs CEO David
Solomon "issued an edict from the mountaintops of Davos." Mr. Solomon announced his company
would refuse to take a company public if its board wasn't sufficiently diverse. "So Goldman
gets to define what counts as 'diverse,' " Mr. Ramaswamy says. "No doubt, they're referring to
skin-deep, genetically inherited attributes."
He describes this sort of corporate imposition -- "a market force supplanting open political
debate to settle the essence of political questions" -- as one of the "defining challenges"
America faces today. "If democracy means anything," he adds, "it means living in a
one-person-one-vote system, not a one-dollar-one-vote system." Voters' voices "are unadjusted
by the number of dollars we wield in the marketplace." Open debate in the public square is "our
uniquely American mechanism" of settling political questions. He likens the woke-corporate
silencing of debate as akin to the "old-world European model, where a small group of elites
gets in a room and decides what's good for everyone else."
The wokeism-capitalism embrace, Mr. Ramaswamy says, was replicated in Silicon Valley. Over
the past few years, "Big Tech effectively agreed to censor -- or 'moderate' -- content that the
woke movement didn't like. But they didn't do it for free." In return, the left "agreed to look
the other way when it comes to leaving Silicon Valley's monopoly power intact." This
arrangement is "working out masterfully" for both sides.
The rest of corporate America appears to be following suit. "There's a Big Pharma version,
too," Mr. Ramaswamy says. "Big Pharma had an epiphany in dealing with the left." It couldn't
beat them, so it joined them. "Rather than win the debate on drug pricing, they decided to just
change the subject instead. Who needs to win a debate if you can just avoid having it?" So we
see "big-time pharma CEOs musing about topics like racial justice and environmentalism, and
writing multibillion-dollar checks to fight climate change, while taking price hikes that
they'd previously paused when the public was angry about drug pricing."
Coca-Cola follows the same playbook, he says: "It's easier for them to issue statements
about voting laws in Georgia, or to train their employees on how to 'be less white,' than it is
to publicly reckon with its role in fueling a nationwide epidemic of diabetes and obesity --
including in the black communities they profess to care about so much." (In a statement,
Coca-Cola apologized
for the "be less white" admonition and said that while it was "accessible through our company
training platform," it "was not a part of our training curriculum.")
Nike finds it much easier to write checks to Black Lives Matter and condemn America's
history of slavery, Mr. Ramaswamy says, even as it relies on "slave labor" today to sell "$250
sneakers to black kids in the inner city who can't afford to buy books for school." All the
while, Black Lives Matter "neuters the police in a way that sacrifices even more black lives."
(Nike has said in a statement that its code of conduct prohibits any use of forced labor and
"we have been engaging with multi-stakeholder working groups to assess collective solutions
that will help preserve the integrity of our global supply chains.")
... ... ...
Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
and at New York University Law School's Classical Liberal Institute.
Rod Drake 53 minutes ago
Seems to me in a nutshell he is saying that these woke corporations are all hypocrites. No
surprise there hypocrisy is a defining characteristic of the woke left and you need to assume
that characteristic yourself to be able to work within their bounds.
In addition, I have been
saying for some time discrimination based on political belief desperately needs to be
included as a prohibited basis. Where are the Republicans, while the greatest civil rights
violation of our time is going on right under their noses?
Terry Overbey 1 hour ago
I love reading stories about people who are willing to take on the woke political class. For
most people, even if they strongly disagree, their only option is to bite their tongue and go
along. People aren't stupid. If you buck the system, you don't get promoted, you don't get
good grades, you don't get into elite schools, you don't get the government job.
Thank you Mr Ramaswany.
James Ransom 1 hour ago
Well. If nothing else, he just sold me a book. I think we should say that "Wokeism" tries to
"Act Like" a religion, not that it is one. Because of this fakery, we do not need to give it
"freedom" in the sense that we have "Freedom of Religion."
These misguided Americans perhaps need to be exposed to a real religion. Christianity and
Buddhism would be good choices; I don't know about Hinduism, but my point is that "Wokeism"
is more like a mental disorder. We should feel sorry for its victims, offer them treatment,
but not let them run anything.
marc goodman 1 hour ago
Wokeists argue that theirs is not a religion because it doesn't center on a transcendent
being. I see Wokeism as a religion that gathers multiple Secularist sects into a big tent.
These sects include Environmentalism, Genderism, Anti-Racism, and more.
One thing all religions share in common is the elevation of questionable premises to
unassailable truths which they defend with religious zeal. Some questionable premises
elevated to unassailable truths by Wokeism are that humans are making the Earth
uninhabitable, gender is an individual choice, and race is the most important human
characteristic. There are more.
Humans need to believe in something greater than themselves. We fulfill this need with
religion, and historically, the "greater something" has been a transcendent being. Wokeism
fulfills this need for its adherents but without a transcendent being. Ultimately, Wokeism
will fail as a religion because it can't nourish the soul like the belief in a transcendent
being does.
Grodney Ross 2 hours ago (Edited)
Judgement will be passed in November of 2022. I don't see this as a Democrat vs Republican
issue. I think it's a matter of who is paying attention vs. those who are not. We live in a
society where, generally, the most strident voices are on the left, along with the most
judgmental voices. When the "wokeless" engage in a manner that conflicts with views of the
woke, they are attacked, be you from the left or the right, so you keep your mouth shut and go
about your day.
I believe that this coming election will give voice to those who are fatigued and fed up
with the progressive lefts venom and vitriol. If not, we will survive, but without a meaningful
first amendment,14th amendment, or 2nd amendment.
Barbara Helton 2 hours ago (Edited)
Being woke, when practiced by the wealthy and influential, can be extremely similar to
bullying.
Looks like this guys somewhat understands the problems with neoliberalism, but still is captured by neoliberal ideology.
Notable quotes:
"... That all seems awfully quaint today. Pensions disappeared for private-sector employees years ago. Most community banks were gobbled up by one of the mega-banks in the 1990s -- today five banks control 50 percent of the commercial banking industry, which itself mushroomed to the point where finance enjoys about 25 percent of all corporate profits. Union membership fell by 50 percent. ..."
"... Ninety-four percent of the jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were temp or contractor jobs without benefits; people working multiple gigs to make ends meet is increasingly the norm. Real wages have been flat or even declining. The chances that an American born in 1990 will earn more than their parents are down to 50 percent; for Americans born in 1940 the same figure was 92 percent. ..."
"... Thanks to Milton Friedman, Jack Welch, and other corporate titans, the goals of large companies began to change in the 1970s and early 1980s. The notion they espoused -- that a company exists only to maximize its share price -- became gospel in business schools and boardrooms around the country. Companies were pushed to adopt shareholder value as their sole measuring stick. ..."
"... Simultaneously, the major banks grew and evolved as Depression-era regulations separating consumer lending and investment banking were abolished. Financial deregulation started under Ronald Reagan in 1980 and culminated in the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 under Bill Clinton that really set the banks loose. The securities industry grew 500 percent as a share of GDP between 1980 and the 2000s while ordinary bank deposits shrank from 70 percent to 50 percent. Financial products multiplied as even Main Street companies were driven to pursue financial engineering to manage their affairs. GE, my dad's old company and once a beacon of manufacturing, became the fifth biggest financial institution in the country by 2007. ..."
The logic of the meritocracy is leading us to ruin, because we arc collectively primed to ignore the voices of the millions getting
pushed into economic distress by the grinding wheels of automation and innovation. We figure they're complaining or suffering because
they're losers.
We need to break free of this logic of the marketplace before it's too late.
[Neoliberalism] had decimated the economies and cultures of these regions and were set to do the same to many others.
In response, American lives and families are falling apart. Ram- pant financial stress is the new normal. We are in the third
or fourth inning of the greatest economic shift in the history of mankind, and no one seems to be talking about it or doing anything
in response.
The Great Displacement didn't arrive overnight. It has been building for decades as the economy and labor market changed in response
to improving technology, financialization, changing corporate norms, and globalization. In the 1970s, when my parents worked at GE
and Blue Cross Blue Shield in upstate New York, their companies provided generous pensions and expected them to stay for decades.
Community banks were boring businesses that lent money to local companies for a modest return. Over 20 percent of workers were unionized.
Some economic problems existed -- growth was uneven and infla- tion periodically high. But income inequality was low, jobs provided
benefits, and Main Street businesses were the drivers of the economy. There were only three television networks, and in my house
we watched them on a TV with an antenna that we fiddled with to make the picture clearer.
That all seems awfully quaint today. Pensions disappeared for private-sector employees years ago. Most community banks were
gobbled up by one of the mega-banks in the 1990s -- today five banks control 50 percent of the commercial banking industry, which
itself mushroomed to the point where finance enjoys about 25 percent of all corporate profits. Union membership fell by 50 percent.
Ninety-four percent of the jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were temp or contractor jobs without benefits; people working
multiple gigs to make ends meet is increasingly the norm. Real wages have been flat or even declining. The chances that an American
born in 1990 will earn more than their parents are down to 50 percent; for Americans born in 1940 the same figure was 92 percent.
Thanks to Milton Friedman, Jack Welch, and other corporate titans, the goals of large companies began to change in the 1970s
and early 1980s. The notion they espoused -- that a company exists only to maximize its share price -- became gospel in business
schools and boardrooms around the country. Companies were pushed to adopt shareholder value as their sole measuring stick.
Hostile takeovers, shareholder lawsuits, and later activist hedge funds served as prompts to ensure that managers were committed
to profitability at all costs. On the flip side, CF.Os were granted stock options for the first time that wedded their individual
gain to the company's share price. The ratio of CF.O to worker pay rose from 20 to 1 in 1965 to 271 to 1 in 2016. Benefits were streamlined
and reduced and the relationship between company and employee weakened to become more transactional.
Simultaneously, the major banks grew and evolved as Depression-era regulations separating consumer lending and investment
banking were abolished. Financial deregulation started under Ronald Reagan in 1980 and culminated in the Financial Services Modernization
Act of 1999 under Bill Clinton that really set the banks loose. The securities industry grew 500 percent as a share of GDP between
1980 and the 2000s while ordinary bank deposits shrank from 70 percent to 50 percent. Financial products multiplied as even Main
Street companies were driven to pursue financial engineering to manage their affairs. GE, my dad's old company and once a beacon
of manufacturing, became the fifth biggest financial institution in the country by 2007.
It's hard to be in the year 2018 and not hear about the endless studies alarming the general public about coming labor automation.
But what Yang provides in this book is two key things: automation has already been ravaging the country which has led to the great
political polarization of today, and second, an actual vision into what happens when people lose jobs, and it definitely is a
lightning strike of "oh crap"
I found this book relatively impressive and frightening. Yang, a former lawyer, entrepreneur, and non-profit leader, writes
showing with inarguable data that when companies automate work and use new software, communities die, drug use increases, suicide
increases, and crime skyrockets. The new jobs created go to big cities, the surviving talent leaves, and the remaining people
lose hope and descend into madness. (as a student of psychology, this is not surprising)
He starts by painting the picture of the average American and how fragile they are economically. He deconstructs the labor
predictions and how technology is going to ravage it. He discusses the future of work. He explains what has happened in technology
and why it's suddenly a huge threat. He shows what this means: economic inequality rises, the people have less power, the voice
of democracy is diminished, no one owns stocks, people get poorer etc. He shows that talent is leaving small towns, money is concentrating
to big cities faster. He shows what happens when those other cities die (bad things), and then how the people react when they
have no income (really bad things). He shows how retraining doesn't work and college is failing us. We don't invest in vocational
skills, and our youth is underemployed pushed into freelance work making minimal pay. He shows how no one trusts the institutions
anymore.
Then he discusses solutions with a focus on Universal Basic Income. I was a skeptic of the idea until I read this book. You
literally walk away with this burning desire to prevent a Mad Max esque civil war, and its hard to argue with him. We don't have
much time and our bloated micromanaged welfare programs cannot sustain.
The author is a very fuzzy way comes to the idea that neoliberalism is in essence a Trotskyism for the rich and that
neoliberals want to use strong state to enforce the type of markets they want from above. That included free movement of
capital goods and people across national borders. All this talk about "small government" is just a smoke screen for naive fools.
"... The second explanation was that neoliberal globalization made a small number of people very rich, and it was in the interest of those people to promote a self-serving ideology using their substantial means by funding think tanks and academic departments, lobbying congress, fighting what the Heritage Foundation calls "the war of ideas." Neoliberalism, then, was a restoration of class power after the odd, anomalous interval of the mid-century welfare state. ..."
"... Here one is free to choose but only within a limited range of options left after responding to the global forces of the market. ..."
"... Neoliberal globalism can be thought of in its own terms as a negative theology, contending that the world economy is sublime and ineffable with a small number of people having special insight and ability to craft institutions that will, as I put it, encase the sublime world economy. ..."
"... One of the big goals of my book is to show neoliberalism is one form of regulation among many rather than the big Other of regulation as such. ..."
"... I build here on the work of other historians and show how the demands in the United Nations by African, Asian, and Latin American nations for things like the Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources, i.e. the right to nationalize foreign-owned companies, often dismissed as merely rhetorical, were actually existentially frightening to global businesspeople. ..."
"... They drafted neoliberal intellectuals to do things like craft agreements that gave foreign corporations more rights than domestic actors and tried to figure out how to lock in what I call the "human right of capital flight" into binding international codes. I show how we can see the development of the WTO as largely a response to the fear of a planned -- and equal -- planet that many saw in the aspirations of the decolonizing world. ..."
"... The neoliberal insight of the 1930s was that the market would not take care of itself: what Wilhelm Röpke called a market police was an ongoing need in a world where people, whether out of atavistic drives or admirable humanitarian motives, kept trying to make the earth a more equal and just place. ..."
"... The culmination of these processes by the 1990s is a world economy that is less like a laissez-faire marketplace and more like a fortress, as ever more of the world's resources and ideas are regulated through transnational legal instruments. ..."
Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Harvard University Press (March 16, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0674979524
ISBN-13: 978-0674979529
From introduction
...The second explanation was that neoliberal globalization made a small number of people very rich, and it was in the interest of
those people to promote a self-serving ideology using their substantial means by funding think tanks and academic departments, lobbying
congress, fighting what the Heritage Foundation calls "the war of ideas." Neoliberalism, then, was a restoration of class power after
the odd, anomalous interval of the mid-century welfare state.
There is truth to both of these explanations. Both presuppose a kind of materialist explanation of history with which I have no
problem. In my book, though, I take another approach. What I found is that we could not understand the inner logic of something like
the WTO without considering the whole history of the twentieth century. What I also discovered is that some of the members of the
neoliberal movement from the 1930s onward, including Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, did not use either of the explanations
I just mentioned. They actually didn't say that economic growth excuses everything. One of the peculiar things about Hayek, in particular,
is that he didn't believe in using aggregates like GDP -- the very measurements that we need to even say what growth is.
What I found is that neoliberalism as a philosophy is less a doctrine of economics than a doctrine of ordering -- of creating
the institutions that provide for the reproduction of the totality [of financial elite control of the state]. At the core of the strain I describe is not the idea that we
can quantify, count, price, buy and sell every last aspect of human existence. Actually, here it gets quite mystical. The Austrian
and German School of neoliberals in particular believe in a kind of invisible world economy that cannot be captured in numbers
and figures but always escapes human comprehension.
After all, if you can see something, you can plan it. Because of the very limits to our knowledge, we have to default to ironclad
rules and not try to pursue something as radical as social justice, redistribution, or collective transformation. In a globalized
world, we must give ourselves over to the forces of the market, or the whole thing will stop working.
So this is quite a different version of neoliberal thought than the one we usually have, premised on the abstract of individual
liberty or the freedom to choose. Here one is free to choose but only within a limited range of options left after responding to
the global forces of the market.
One of the core arguments of my book is that we can only understand the internal coherence of neoliberalism if we see it as a
doctrine as concerned with the whole as the individual. Neoliberal globalism can be thought of in its own terms as a negative theology,
contending that the world economy is sublime and ineffable with a small number of people having special insight and ability to craft
institutions that will, as I put it, encase the sublime world economy.
To me, the metaphor of encasement makes much more sense than the usual idea of markets set free, liberated or unfettered. How
can it be that in an era of proliferating third party arbitration courts, international investment law, trade treaties and regulation
that we talk about "unfettered markets"? One of the big goals of my book is to show neoliberalism is one form of regulation among
many rather than the big Other of regulation as such.
What I explore in Globalists is how we can think of the WTO as the latest in a long series of institutional fixes proposed
for the problem of emergent nationalism and what neoliberals see as the confusion between sovereignty -- ruling a country -- and
ownership -- owning the property within it.
I build here on the work of other historians and show how the demands in the United Nations
by African, Asian, and Latin American nations for things like the Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources, i.e. the right to
nationalize foreign-owned companies, often dismissed as merely rhetorical, were actually existentially frightening to global businesspeople.
They drafted neoliberal intellectuals to do things like craft agreements that gave foreign corporations more rights than domestic
actors and tried to figure out how to lock in what I call the "human right of capital flight" into binding international codes. I
show how we can see the development of the WTO as largely a response to the fear of a planned -- and equal -- planet that many saw
in the aspirations of the decolonizing world.
Perhaps the lasting image of globalization that the book leaves is that world capitalism has produced a doubled world -- a world
of imperium (the world of states) and a world of dominium (the world of property). The best way to understand neoliberal globalism
as a project is that it sees its task as the never-ending maintenance of this division. The neoliberal insight of the 1930s was that
the market would not take care of itself: what Wilhelm Röpke called a market police was an ongoing need in a world where people,
whether out of atavistic drives or admirable humanitarian motives, kept trying to make the earth a more equal and just place.
The culmination of these processes by the 1990s is a world economy that is less like a laissez-faire marketplace and more like
a fortress, as ever more of the world's resources and ideas are regulated through transnational legal instruments. The book acts
as a kind of field guide to these institutions and, in the process, hopefully recasts the 20th century that produced them.
This is a rather
interesting look at the political and economic ideas of a circle of important economists, including Hayek and von Mises, over
the course of the last century. He shows rather convincingly that conventional narratives concerning their idea are wrong. That
they didn't believe in a weak state, didn't believe in the laissez-faire capitalism or believe in the power of the market. That
they saw mass democracy as a threat to vested economic interests.
The core beliefs of these people was in a world where money, labor and products could flow across borders without any limit.
Their vision was to remove these subjects (tariffs, immigration and controls on the movement of money) from the control of the
democracy-based nation-state and instead vesting them in international organizations. International organizations which were by
their nature undemocratic and beyond the influence of democracy. That rather than rejecting government power, what they rejected
was national government power. They wanted weak national governments but at the same time strong undemocratic international organizations
which would gain the powers taken from the state.
The other thing that characterized many of these people was a rather general rejection of economics. While some of them are
(at least in theory) economists, they rejected the basic ideas of economic analysis and economic policy. The economy, to them,
was a mystical thing beyond any human understanding or ability to influence in a positive way. Their only real belief was in "bigness".
The larger the market for labor and goods, the more economically prosperous everyone would become. A unregulated "global" market
with specialization across borders and free migration of labor being the ultimate system.
The author shows how, over a period extending from the 1920s to the 1990s, these ideas evolved from marginal academic ideas
to being dominant ideas internationally. Ideas that are reflected today in the structure of the European Union, the WTO (World
Trade Organization) and the policies of most national governments. These ideas, which the author calls "neoliberalism", have today
become almost assumptions beyond challenge. And even more strangely, the dominating ideas of the political left in most of the
west.
The author makes the point, though in a weak way, that the "fathers" of neoliberalism saw themselves as "restoring" a lost
golden age. That golden age being (roughly) the age of the original industrial revolution (the second half of the 1800s). And
to the extent that they have been successful they have done that. But at the same time, they have brought back all the political
and economic questions of that era as well.
In reading it, I started to wonder about the differences between modern neoliberalism and the liberal political movement during
the industrial revolution. I really began to wonder about the actual motives of "reform" liberals in that era. Were they genuinely
interested in reforms during that era or were all the reforms just cynical politics designed to enhance business power at the
expense of other vested interests. Was, in particular, the liberal interest in political reform and franchise expansion a genuine
move toward political democracy or simply a temporary ploy to increase their political power. If one assumes that the true principles
of classic liberalism were always free trade, free migration of labor and removing the power to governments to impact business,
perhaps its collapse around the time of the first world war is easier to understand.
He also makes a good point about the EEC and the organizations that came before the EU. Those organizations were as much about
protecting trade between Europe and former European colonial possessions as they were anything to do with trade within Europe.
To me at least, the analysis of the author was rather original. In particular, he did an excellent job of showing how the ideas
of Hayek and von Mises have been distorted and misunderstood in the mainstream. He was able to show what their ideas were and
how they relate to contemporary problems of government and democracy.
But there are some strong negatives in the book. The author offers up a complete virtue signaling chapter to prove how the
neoliberals are racists. He brings up things, like the John Birch Society, that have nothing to do with the book. He unleashes
a whole lot of venom directed at American conservatives and republicans mostly set against a 1960s backdrop. He does all this
in a bad purpose: to claim that the Kennedy Administration was somehow a continuation of the new deal rather than a step toward
neoliberalism. His blindness and modern political partisanship extended backward into history does substantial damage to his argument
in the book. He also spends an inordinate amount of time on the political issues of South Africa which also adds nothing to the
argument of the book. His whole chapter on racism is an elaborate strawman all held together by Ropke. He also spends a large
amount of time grinding some sort of Ax with regard to the National Review and William F. Buckley.
He keeps resorting to the simple formula of finding something racist said or written by Ropke....and then inferring that anyone
who quoted or had anything to do with Ropke shared his ideas and was also a racist. The whole point of the exercise seems to be
to avoid any analysis of how the democratic party (and the political left) drifted over the decades from the politics of the New
Deal to neoliberal Clintonism.
Then after that, he diverts further off the path by spending many pages on the greatness of the "global south", the G77 and
the New International Economic Order (NIEO) promoted by the UN in the 1970s. And whatever many faults of neoliberalism, Quinn
Slobodian ends up standing for a worse set of ideas: International Price controls, economic "reparations", nationalization, international
trade subsidies and a five-year plan for the world (socialist style economic planning at a global level). In attaching himself
to these particular ideas, he kills his own book. The premise of the book and his argument was very strong at first. But by around
p. 220, its become a throwback political tract in favor of the garbage economic and political ideas of the so-called third world
circa 1974 complete with 70's style extensive quotations from "Senegalese jurists"
Once the political agenda comes out, he just can't help himself. He opens the conclusion to the book taking another cheap shot
for no clear reason at William F. Buckley. He spends alot of time on the Seattle anti-WTO protests from the 1990s. But he has
NOTHING to say about BIll Clinton or Tony Blair or EU expansion or Obama or even the 2008 economic crisis for that matter. Inexplicably
for a book written in 2018, the content of the book seems to end in the year 2000.
I'm giving it three stars for the first 150 pages which was decent work. The second half rates zero stars. Though it could
have been far better if he had written his history of neoliberalism in the context of the counter-narrative of Keynesian economics
and its decline. It would have been better yet if the author had the courage to talk about the transformation of the parties of
the left and their complicity in the rise of neoliberalism. The author also tends to waste lots of pages repeating himself or
worse telling you what he is going to say next. One would have expected a better standard of editing by the Harvard Press.
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Anybody interested in global trade, business, human rights or democracy today
should read this book.
The book follow the Austrians from the beginning in the Habsburgischer empire to the beginning rebellion against the WTO. However,
most importantly it follows the thinking and the thoughts behind the building of a global empire of capitalism with free trade,
capital and rights. All the way to the new "human right" to trade. It narrows down what neoliberal thought really consist of and
indirectly make a differentiation to the neoclassical economic tradition.
What I found most interesting is the turn from economics to law - and the conceptual distinctions between the genes, tradition,
reason, which are translated into a quest for a rational and reason based protection of dominium (the rule of property) against
the overreach of imperium (the rule of states/people). This distinction speaks directly to the issues that EU is currently facing.
"... From the 1980s to 2008, neoliberal politics and policies succeeded in expanding inequality around the world. The political climate Ayn Rand celebrated-the reign of brutal capitalism-intensified. Though Ayn Rand's popularity took off in the 1940s, her reputation took a dive during the 1960s and '70s. Then after her death in 1982, during the neoliberal administrations of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom, her star rose once more. (See chapter 4 for a full discussion of the rise of neoliberalism.) ..."
"... During the global economic crisis of 2008 it seemed that the neoliberal order might collapse. It lived on, however, in zombie form as discredited political policies and financial practices were restored. ..."
"... We are in the midst of a major global, political, economic, social, and cultural transition - but we don't yet know which way we're headed. The incoherence of the Trump administration is symptomatic of the confusion as politicians and business elites jockey with the Breitbart alt-right forces while conservative evangelical Christians pull strings. The unifying threads are meanness and greed, and the spirit of the whole hodgepodge is Ayn Rand. ..."
"... The current Trump administration is stuffed to the gills with Rand acolytes. Trump himself identifies with Fountainhead character Howard Roark; former secretary of state Rex Tillerson listed Adas Shrugged as his favorite book in a Scouting magazine feature; his replacement Mike Pompeo has been inspired by Rand since his youth. Ayn Rand's influence is ascendant across broad swaths of our dominant political culture - including among public figures who see her as a key to the Zeitgeist, without having read a worth of her writing.'' ..."
"... Rand biographer Jennifer Burns asserts simply that Ayn Rand's fiction is "the gateway drug" to right-wing politics in the United States - although her influence extends well beyond the right wing ..."
"... The resulting Randian sense of life might be called "optimistic cruelty." Optimistic cruelty is the sense of life for the age of greed. ..."
"... The Fountainhead and especially Atlas Shrugged fabricate history and romanticize violence and domination in ways that reflect, reshape, and reproduce narratives of European superiority' and American virtue. ..."
"... It is not an accident that the novels' fans, though gender mixed, are overwhelmingly white Americans of the professional, managerial, creative, and business classes." ..."
"... Does the pervasive cruelty of today's ruling classes shock you? Or, at least give you pause from time to time? Are you surprised by the fact that our elected leaders seem to despise people who struggle, people whose lives are not cushioned and shaped by inherited wealth, people who must work hard at many jobs in order to scrape by? If these or any of a number of other questions about the social proclivities of our contemporary ruling class detain you for just two seconds, this is the book for you. ..."
"... As Duggan makes clear, Rand's influence is not just that she offered a programmatic for unregulated capitalism, but that she offered an emotional template for "optimistic cruelty" that has extended far beyond its libertarian confines. Mean Girl is a fun, worthwhile read! ..."
"... Her work circulated endlessly in those circles of the Goldwater-ite right. I have changed over many years, and my own life experiences have led me to reject the casual cruelty and vicious supremacist bent of Rand's beliefs. ..."
"... In fact, though her views are deeply-seated, Rand is, at heart, a confidence artist, appealing only to narrow self-interest at the expense of the well-being of whole societies. ..."
Mean Girls, which was based on interviews with high school girls conducted by Rosalind Wiseman for her 2002 book Queen Bees and
War/tubes, reflects the emotional atmosphere of the age of the Plastics (as the most popular girls at Actional North Shore High are
called), as well as the era of Wall Street's Gordon Gekko, whose motto is "Greed is Good."1 The culture of greed is the hallmark
of the neoliberal era, the period beginning in the 1970s when the protections of the U.S. and European welfare states, and the autonomy
of postcolonial states around the world, came under attack. Advocates of neoliberalism worked to reshape global capitalism by freeing
transnational corporations from restrictive forms of state regulation, stripping away government efforts to redistribute wealth and
provide public services, and emphasizing individual responsibility over social concern.
From the 1980s to 2008, neoliberal politics and policies succeeded in expanding inequality around the world. The political
climate Ayn Rand celebrated-the reign of brutal capitalism-intensified. Though Ayn Rand's popularity took off in the 1940s, her reputation
took a dive during the 1960s and '70s. Then after her death in 1982, during the neoliberal administrations of Ronald Reagan in the
United States and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom, her star rose once more. (See chapter 4 for a full discussion of the rise
of neoliberalism.)
During the global economic crisis of 2008 it seemed that the neoliberal order might collapse. It lived on, however, in zombie
form as discredited political policies and financial practices were restored. But neoliberal capitalism has always been contested,
and competing and conflicting political ideas and organizations proliferated and intensified after 2008 as well.
Protest politics blossomed on the left with Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and opposition to the Dakota Access oil pipeline
at the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in the United States, and with the Arab Spring, and other mobilizations around the world.
Anti-neoliberal electoral efforts, like the Bernie Sanders campaign for the U.S. presidency, generated excitement as well.
But protest and organizing also expanded on the political right, with reactionary populist, racial nationalist, and protofascist
gains in such countries as India, the Philippines, Russia, Hungary, and the United States rapidly proliferating. Between these far-right
formations on the one side and persistent zombie neoliberalism on the other, operating sometimes at odds and sometimes in cahoots,
the Season of Mean is truly upon us.
We are in the midst of a major global, political, economic, social, and cultural transition - but we don't yet know which
way we're headed. The incoherence of the Trump administration is symptomatic of the confusion as politicians and business elites
jockey with the Breitbart alt-right forces while conservative evangelical Christians pull strings. The unifying threads are meanness
and greed, and the spirit of the whole hodgepodge is Ayn Rand.
Rand's ideas are not the key to her influence. Her writing does support the corrosive capitalism at the heart of neoliberalism,
though few movers and shakers actually read any of her nonfiction. Her two blockbuster novels, 'The Fountainpen and Atlas Shrugged,
are at the heart of her incalculable impact. Many politicians and government officials going back decades have cited Rand as a formative
influence-particularly finance guru and former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who was a member of Rand's inner circle,
and Ronald Reagan, the U.S. president most identified with the national embrace of neoliberal policies.
Major figures in business and finance are or have been Rand fans: Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Peter Thiel (Paypal), Steve Jobs (Apple),
John Mackey (Whole Foods), Mark Cuban (NBA), John Allison (BB&T Banking Corporation), Travis Kalanik (Uber), Jelf Bezos (Amazon),
ad infinitum.
There are also large clusters of enthusiasts for Rand's novels in the entertainment industry, from the 1940s to the present-from
Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, and Raquel Welch to Jerry Lewis, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Rob Lowe, Jim Carrey, Sandra Bullock,
Sharon Stone, Ashley Judd, Eva Mendes, and many more.
The current Trump administration is stuffed to the gills with Rand acolytes. Trump himself identifies with Fountainhead character
Howard Roark; former secretary of state Rex Tillerson listed Adas Shrugged as his favorite book in a Scouting magazine feature; his
replacement Mike Pompeo has been inspired by Rand since his youth. Ayn Rand's influence is ascendant across broad swaths of our dominant
political culture - including among public figures who see her as a key to the Zeitgeist, without having read a worth of her writing.''
But beyond the famous or powerful fans, the novels have had a wide popular impact as bestsellers since publication. Along
with Rand's nonfiction, they form the core texts for a political/ philosophical movement: Objectivism. There are several U.S.- based
Objectivist organizations and innumerable clubs, reading groups, and social circles. A 1991 survey by the Library of Congress and
the Book of the Month Club found that only the Bible had influenced readers more than Atlas Shrugged, while a 1998 Modern Library
poll listed The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged as the two most revered novels in English.
Atlas Shrugged in particular skyrocketed in popularity in the wake of the 2008 financial crash. The U.S. Tea Party movement, founded
in 2009, featured numerous Ayn Rand-based signs and slogans, especially the opening line of Atlas Shrugged: "Who is John Galt?" Republican
pundit David Frum claimed that the Tea Party was reinventing the GOP as "the party of Ayn Rand." During 2009 as well, sales of Atlas
Shrugged tripled, and GQ_magazine called Rand the year's most influential author. A 2010 Zogby poll found that 29 percent of respondents
had read Atlas Shrugged, and half of those readers said it had affected their political and ethical thinking.
In 2018, a business school teacher writing in Forbes magazine recommended repeat readings: "Recent events - the bizarro circus
that is the 2016 election, the disintegration of Venezuela, and so on make me wonder if a lot of this could have been avoided bad
we taken Atlas Shrugged's message to heart. It is a book that is worth re-reading every few years."3
Rand biographer Jennifer Burns asserts simply that Ayn Rand's fiction is "the gateway drug" to right-wing politics in the
United States - although her influence extends well beyond the right wing.4
But how can the work of this one novelist (also an essayist, playwright, and philosopher), however influential, be a significant
source of insight into the rise of a culture of greed? In a word: sex. Ayn Rand made acquisitive capitalists sexy. She launched thousands
of teenage libidos into the world of reactionary politics on a wave of quivering excitement. This sexiness extends beyond romance
to infuse the creative aspirations, inventiveness, and determination of her heroes with erotic energy, embedded in what Rand called
her "sense of life." Analogous to what Raymond Williams has called a "structure of feeling," Rand's sense of life combines the libido-infused
desire for heroic individual achievement with contempt for social inferiors and indifference to their plight.5
Lauren Berlant has called the structure of feeling, or emotional situation, of those who struggle for a good life under neoliberal
conditions "cruel optimism"-the complex of feelings necessary to keep plugging away hopefully despite setbacks and losses.'' Rand's
contrasting sense of life applies to those whose fantasies of success and domination include no doubt or guilt. The feelings of aspiration
and glee that enliven Rand's novels combine with contempt for and indifference to others. The resulting Randian sense of life
might be called "optimistic cruelty." Optimistic cruelty is the sense of life for the age of greed.
Ayn Rand's optimistic cruelty appeals broadly and deeply through its circulation of familiar narratives: the story of "civilizational"
progress, die belief in American exceptionalism, and a commitment to capitalist freedom.
Her novels engage fantasies of European imperial domination conceived as technological and cultural advancement, rather than as
violent conquest. America is imagined as a clean slate for pure capitalist freedom, with no indigenous people, no slaves, no exploited
immigrants or workers in sight. The Fountainhead and especially Atlas Shrugged fabricate history and romanticize violence and
domination in ways that reflect, reshape, and reproduce narratives of European superiority' and American virtue.
Their logic also depends on a hierarchy of value based on radicalized beauty and physical capacity - perceived ugliness or disability'
are equated with pronounced worthlessness and incompetence.
Through the forms of romance and melodrama, Rand novels extrapolate the story of racial capitalism as a story of righteous passion
and noble virtue. They retell The Birth of a Ntation through the lens of industrial capitalism (see chapter 2). They solicit positive
identification with winners, with dominant historical forces. It is not an accident that the novels' fans, though gender mixed,
are overwhelmingly white Americans of the professional, managerial, creative, and business classes."
Ayn Rand is a singular influence on American political thought, and this book brilliantly unfolds how Rand gave voice to the
ethos that shapes contemporary conservatism. Duggan -- whose equally insightful earlier book Twilight of Equality offered an analysis
of neoliberalism and showed how it is both a distortion and continuation of classical liberalism -- here extends the analysis
of American market mania by showing how an anti-welfare state ethos took root as a "structure of feeling" in American culture,
elevating the individual over the collective and promoting a culture of inequality as itself a moral virtue.
Although reviled by the right-wing press (she should wear this as a badge of honor), Duggan is the most astute guide one could
hope for through this devastating history of our recent past, and the book helps explain how we ended up where we are, where far-right,
racist nationalism colludes (paradoxically) with libertarianism, an ideology of extreme individualism and (unlikely bed fellows,
one might have thought) Silicon Valley entrepreneurship.
This short, accessible book is essential reading for everyone who wants to understand the contemporary United States.
Does the pervasive cruelty of today's ruling classes shock you? Or, at least give you pause from time to time? Are you
surprised by the fact that our elected leaders seem to despise people who struggle, people whose lives are not cushioned and shaped
by inherited wealth, people who must work hard at many jobs in order to scrape by? If these or any of a number of other questions
about the social proclivities of our contemporary ruling class detain you for just two seconds, this is the book for you.
Writing with wit, rigor, and vigor, Lisa Duggan explains how Ayn Rand, the "mean girl," has captured the minds and snatched
the bodies of so very many, and has rendered them immune to feelings of shared humanity with those whose fortunes are not as rosy
as their own. An indispensable work, a short read that leaves a long memory.
Mean Girl offers not only a biographical account of Rand (including the fact that she modeled one of her key heroes on a serial
killer), but describes Rand's influence on neoliberal thinking more generally.
As Duggan makes clear, Rand's influence is not just that she offered a programmatic for unregulated capitalism, but that
she offered an emotional template for "optimistic cruelty" that has extended far beyond its libertarian confines. Mean Girl is
a fun, worthwhile read!
Sister, June 3, 2019
Superb poitical and cultural exploration of Rand's influence
Lisa Duggan's concise but substantive look at the political and cultural influence of Ayn Rand is stunning. I feel like I've
been waiting most of a lifetime for a book that is as wonderfully readable as it is insightful. Many who write about Rand reduce
her to a caricature hero or demon without taking her, and the history and choices that produced her seriously as a subject of
cultural inquiry. I am one of those people who first encountered Rand's books - novels, but also some nonfiction and her play,
"The Night of January 16th," in which audience members were selected as jurors – as a teenager.
Under the thrall of some right-wing locals, I was so drawn to Rand's larger-than-life themes, the crude polarization of "individualism"
and "conformity," the admonition to selfishness as a moral virtue, her reductive dismissal of the public good as "collectivism."
Her work circulated endlessly in those circles of the Goldwater-ite right. I have changed over many years, and my own life
experiences have led me to reject the casual cruelty and vicious supremacist bent of Rand's beliefs.
But over those many years, the coterie of Rand true believers has kept the faith and expanded. One of the things I value about
Duggan's compelling account is her willingness to take seriously the far reach of Rand's indifference to human suffering even
as she strips away the veneer that suggests Rand's beliefs were deep.
In fact, though her views are deeply-seated, Rand is, at heart, a confidence artist, appealing only to narrow self-interest
at the expense of the well-being of whole societies.
I learned that the hard way, but I learned it. Now I am recommending Duggan's wise book to others who seek to understand today's
cultural and political moment in the United States and the rise of an ethic of indifference to anybody but the already affluent.
Duggan is comfortable with complexity; most Randian champions or detractors are not.
"... No other book out there has the level of breadth on the history of US imperialism that this work provides. Even though it packs 400 pages of text (which might seem like a turnoff for non-academic readers), "How to Hide an Empire" is highly readable given Immerwhar's skills as a writer. Also, its length is part of what makes it awesome because it gives it the right amount of detail and scope. ..."
"... Alleging that US imperialism in its long evolution (which this book deciphers with poignancy) has had no bearing on the destinies of its once conquered populations is as fallacious as saying that the US is to blame for every single thing that happens in Native American communities, or in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, etc. Not everything that happens in these locations and among these populations is directly connected to US expansionism, but a great deal is. ..."
"... This is exactly the kind of book that drives the "My country, right or wrong" crowd crazy. Yes, slavery and genocide and ghastly scientific experiments existed before Europeans colonized the Americas, but it's also fair and accurate to say that Europeans made those forms of destruction into a bloody artform. Nobody did mass slaughter better. ..."
I'm a professor at the University of California San Diego and I'm assigning
this for a graduate class.
No other book out there has the level of breadth on the history of US imperialism that this work provides.
Even though it packs 400 pages of text (which might seem like a turnoff for non-academic readers), "How to Hide an Empire" is
highly readable given Immerwhar's skills as a writer. Also, its length is part of what makes it awesome because it gives it the
right amount of detail and scope.
I could not disagree more with the person who gave this book one star. Take it from me: I've taught hundreds of college students
who graduate among the best in their high school classes and they know close to nothing about the history of US settler colonialism,
overseas imperialism, or US interventionism around the world. If you give University of California college students a quiz on
where the US' overseas territories are, most who take it will fail (trust me, I've done it). And this is not their fault. Instead,
it's a product of the US education system that fails to give students a nuanced and geographically comprehensive understanding
of the oversized effect that their country has around our planet.
Alleging that US imperialism in its long evolution (which this book deciphers with poignancy) has had no bearing on the destinies
of its once conquered populations is as fallacious as saying that the US is to blame for every single thing that happens in Native
American communities, or in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, etc. Not everything that happens in these locations
and among these populations is directly connected to US expansionism, but a great deal is.
A case in point is Puerto Rico's current fiscal and economic crisis. The island's political class share part of the blame for
Puerto Rico's present rut. A lot of it is also due to unnatural (i.e. "natural" but human-exacerbated) disasters such as Hurricane
María. However, there is no denying that the evolution of Puerto Rico's territorial status has generated a host of adverse economic
conditions that US states (including an island state such as Hawaii) do not have to contend with. An association with the US has
undoubtedly raised the floor of material conditions in these places, but it has also imposed an unjust glass ceiling that most
people around the US either do not know about or continue to ignore.
To add to those unfair economic limitations, there are political injustices regarding the lack of representation in Congress,
and in the case of Am. Samoa, their lack of US citizenship. The fact that the populations in the overseas territories can't make
up their mind about what status they prefer is: a) understandable given the way they have been mistreated by the US government,
and b) irrelevant because what really matters is what Congress decides to do with the US' far-flung colonies, and there is no
indication that Congress wants to either fully annex them or let them go because neither would be convenient to the 50 states
and the political parties that run them. Instead, the status quo of modern colonial indeterminacy is what works best for the most
potent political and economic groups in the US mainland. Would
This book is about much more than that though. It's also a history of how and why the United States got to control so much
of what happens around the world without creating additional formal colonies like the "territories" that exist in this legal limbo.
Part of its goal is to show how precisely how US imperialism has been made to be more cost-effective and also more invisible.
Read Immerwhar's book, and don't listen to the apologists of US imperialism which is still an active force that contradicts
the US' professed values and that needs to be actively dismantled. Their attempts at discrediting this important reflect a denialism
of the US' imperial realities that has endured throughout the history that this book summarizes.
"How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States" is a great starting point for making the US public aware of
the US' contradictions as an "empire of liberty" (a phrase once used by Thomas Jefferson to describe the US as it expanded westward
beyond the original 13 colonies). It is also a necessary update to other books on this topic that are already out there, and it
is likely to hold the reader's attention more given its crafty narrative prose and structure
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This is exactly the
kind of book that drives the "My country, right or wrong" crowd crazy. Yes, slavery and genocide and ghastly scientific experiments
existed before Europeans colonized the Americas, but it's also fair and accurate to say that Europeans made those forms of destruction
into a bloody artform. Nobody did mass slaughter better.
The author of this compelling book reveals a history unknown to many
readers, and does so with first-hand accounts and deep historical analyses. You might ask why we can't put such things behind
us. The simple answer: we've never fully grappled with these events before in an honest and open way. This book does the nation
a service by peering behind the curtain and facing the sobering truth of how we came to be what we are.
This is a stunning book, not to be missed. If you finished Sapiens with the feeling your world view had
greatly enlarged, you're likely to have the same experience of your view of the US from reading this engaging work. And like Sapiens,
it's an entirely enjoyable read, full of delightful surprises, future dinner party gems.
The further you get into the book the more interesting and unexpected it becomes. You'll look at the US in ways you likely
never considered before. This is not a 'political' book with an ax to grind or a single-party agenda. It's refreshingly insightful,
beautifully written, fun to read.
This is a gift I'll give to many a good friend, I've just started with my wife. I rarely write
reviews and have never met the author (now my only regret). 3 people found this helpful
This book is an absolutely powerhouse, a must-read, and should be a part of every student's curriculum in
this God forsaken country.
Strictly speaking, this brilliant read is focused on America's relationship with Empire. But like with nearly everything America,
one cannot discuss it without discussing race and injustice.
If you read this book, you will learn a lot of new things about subjects that you thought you knew everything about. You will
have your eyes opened. You will be exposed to the dark underbelly of racism, corruption, greed and exploitation that undergird
American ambition.
I don't know exactly what else to say other than to say you MUST READ THIS BOOK. This isn't a partisan statement -- it's not
like Democrats are any better than Republicans in this book.
This is one of the best books I've ever read, and I am a voracious reader. The content is A+. It never gets boring. It never
gets tedious. It never lingers on narratives. It's extremely well written. It is, in short, perfect. And as such, 10/10.
I heard an interview of Daniel Immerwahr on NPR news / WDET radio regarding this book.
I'm am quite conservative
and only listen to NPR news when it doesn't lean too far to the left.
However, the interview piqued my interest. I am so glad I
purchased this ebook. What a phenomenal and informative read!!! WOW!! It's a "I never knew that" kind of read. Certainly not anything
I was taught in school. This is thoughtful, well written and an easy read. Highly recommend!!
This is a very short book, almost an essay -- 136 pages. It was published in October 2004, four years before financial crisis of
2008, which put the first nail in the coffin of neoliberalism. It addresses the cultural politics of neo-liberalism ("the
Great Deception")
Notable quotes:
"... By now, we've all heard about the shocking redistribution of wealth that's occurred during the last thirty years, and particularly during the last decade. But economic changes like this don't occur in a vacuum; they're always linked to politics. ..."
"... Ultimately, The Twilight of Equality? not only reveals how the highly successful rhetorical maneuvers of neoliberalism have functioned ..."
"... The titles of her four chapters--Downsizing Democracy, The Incredible Shrinking Public, Equality, Inc., Love AND Money--summarize her argument. ..."
"... Her target is neoliberalism, which she sees as a broadly controlling corporate agenda which seeks world domination, privatization of governmental decision-making, and marginalization of unions, low-income people, racial and sexual minorities while presenting to the public a benign and inclusive facade. ..."
"... Neo-liberalism seeks to upwardly distribute money, power, and status, she writes, while progressive movements seek to downwardly distribute money, power, and status. The unity of the downwardly distribution advocates should match the unity of the upwardly distribution advocates in order to be effective, she writes. ..."
"... "There is nothing stable or inevitable in the alliances supporting neoliberal agendas in the U.S. and globally," she writes. "The alliances linking neoliberal global economics, and conservative and right-wing domestic politics, and the culture wars are provisional--and fading...." ..."
"... For example, she discusses neoliberal attempts to be "multicultural," but points out that economic resources are constantly redistributed upward. Neoliberal politics, she argues, has only reinforced and increased the divide between economic and social political issues. ..."
"... Because neoliberal politicians wish to save neoliberalism by reforming it, she argues that proposing alternate visions and ideas have been blocked. ..."
By now, we've all heard about the shocking redistribution of wealth that's occurred during the last thirty years, and
particularly during the last decade. But economic changes like this don't occur in a vacuum; they're always linked to politics.
The Twilight of Equality? searches out these links through an analysis of the politics of the 1990s, the decade when
neoliberalism-free market economics-became gospel.
After a brilliant historical examination of how racial and gender inequities were woven into the very theoretical underpinnings
of the neoliberal model of the state, Duggan shows how these inequities play out today. In a series of political case studies,
Duggan reveals how neoliberal goals have been pursued, demonstrating that progressive arguments that separate identity politics and
economic policy, cultural politics and affairs of state, can only fail.
Ultimately, The Twilight of Equality? not only reveals how the highly successful rhetorical maneuvers of neoliberalism have
functioned but, more importantly, it shows a way to revitalize and unify progressive politics in the U.S. today.
Mona Cohen 5.0 out of 5 stars A Critique of Neoliberalism and the Divided Resistance to It July 3, 2006
Lisa Duggan is intensely interested in American politics, and has found political life in the United States to have been "such
a wild ride, offering moments of of dizzying hope along with long stretches of political depression." She is grateful for "many
ideas about political depression, and how to survive it," and she has written a excellent short book that helps make sense of
many widely divergent political trends.
Her book is well-summarized by its concluding paragraph, which I am breaking up into additional paragraphs for greater
clarity:
"Now at this moment of danger and opportunity, the progressive left is mobilizing against neoliberalism and possible new or
continuing wars.
"These mobilizations might become sites for factional struggles over the disciplining of troops, in the name of unity at a
time of crisis and necessity. But such efforts will fail; the troops will not be disciplined, and the disciplinarians will be
left to their bitterness.
"Or, we might find ways of think, speaking, writing and acting that are engaged and curious about "other people's" struggles
for social justice, that are respectfully affiliative and dialogic rather than pedagogical, that that look for the hopeful spots
to expand upon, and that revel in the pleasure of political life.
"For it is pleasure AND collective caretaking, love AND the egalitarian circulation of money--allied to clear and hard-headed
political analysis offered generously--that will create the space for a progressive politics that might both imagine and
create...something worth living for."
The titles of her four chapters--Downsizing Democracy, The Incredible Shrinking Public, Equality, Inc., Love AND
Money--summarize her argument.
She expected upon her high school graduation in 1972, she writes, that "active and expanding social movements seemed capable
of ameliorating conditions of injustice and inequality, poverty, war and imperialism....I had no idea I was not perched at a
great beginning, but rather at a denouement, as the possibilities for progressive social change encountered daunting historical
setbacks beginning in 1972...."
Her target is neoliberalism, which she sees as a broadly controlling corporate agenda which seeks world domination,
privatization of governmental decision-making, and marginalization of unions, low-income people, racial and sexual minorities
while presenting to the public a benign and inclusive facade.
Neo-liberalism seeks to upwardly distribute money, power, and status, she writes, while progressive movements seek to
downwardly distribute money, power, and status. The unity of the downwardly distribution advocates should match the unity of the
upwardly distribution advocates in order to be effective, she writes.
Her belief is that all groups threatened by the neoliberal paradigm should unite against it, but such unity is threatened by
endless differences of perspectives. By minutely analyzing many of the differences, and expanding understanding of diverse
perspectives, she tries to remove them as obstacles towards people and organizations working together to achieve both unique and
common aims.
This is good book for those interested in the history and current significance of numerous progressive ideological arguments.
It is a good book for organizers of umbrella organizations and elected officials who work with diverse social movements. By
articulating points of difference, the author depersonalizes them and aids in overcoming them.
Those who are interested in electoral strategies, however, will be disappointed. The interrelationship between neoliberalism
as a governing ideology and neoliberalism as a political strategy is not discussed here. It is my view that greater and more
focused and inclusive political organizing has the potential to win over a good number of the those who see support of
neoliberalism's policy initiatives as a base-broadening tactic more than as a sacred cause.
"There is nothing stable or inevitable in the alliances supporting neoliberal agendas in the U.S. and globally," she
writes. "The alliances linking neoliberal global economics, and conservative and right-wing domestic politics, and the culture
wars are provisional--and fading...."
Reading this book adds to one's understanding of labels, and political and intellectual distinctions. It has too much jargon
for my taste, but not so much as to be impenetrable. It is an excellent summarization and synthesis of the goals, ideologies, and
histories of numerous social movements, both famous and obscure.
Duggan
articulately connects social and economic issues to each other, arguing that neoliberal
politics have divided the two when in actuality, they cannot be separated from one another.
In the introduction, Duggan argues that politics have become neoliberal - while politics
operate under the guise of promoting social change or social stability, in reality, she argues,
politicians have failed to make the connection between economic and social/cultural issues. She
uses historical background to prove the claim that economic and social issues can be separated
from each other is false.
For example, she discusses neoliberal attempts to be "multicultural," but points out that
economic resources are constantly redistributed upward. Neoliberal politics, she argues, has
only reinforced and increased the divide between economic and social political issues.
After the introduction, Duggan focuses on a specific topic in each chapter: downsizing
democracy, the incredible shrinking public, equality, and love and money. In the first chapter
(downsizing democracy), she argues that through violent imperial assertion in the Middle East,
budget cuts in social services, and disillusionments in political divides, "capitalists could
actually bring down capitalism" (p. 2).
Because neoliberal politicians wish to save neoliberalism by reforming it, she argues that
proposing alternate visions and ideas have been blocked. Duggan provides historical background
that help the reader connect early nineteenth century U.S. legislation (regarding voting rights
and slavery) to perpetuated institutional prejudices.
Over-promotion far beyond the level of competency using affirmative action playbook is a real problem and much more serious that
Peter Principle would suggest: often it is instrumental in getting female sociopaths into corner office.
Imagine a chimpanzee rampaging through a data center powering everything from Google to Facebook. Infrastructure engineers use a
software version of this "chaos monkey" to test online services' robustness -- their ability to survive random failure and correct
mistakes before they actually occur. Tech entrepreneurs are society's chaos monkeys, disruptors testing and transforming every
aspect of our lives, from transportation (Uber) and lodging (Airbnb) to television (Netflix) and dating (Tinder). One of Silicon
Valley's most provocative chaos monkeys is Antonio García Martínez.
After stints on Wall Street and as CEO of his own startup, García Martínez joined Facebook's nascent advertising team, until he was
forced out in the wake of an internal product war over the future of the company's monetization strategy, and eventually landed at
rival Twitter.
In
Chaos Monkeys
, this gleeful contrarian unravels the chaotic evolution of social media and
online marketing and lays bare the hijinks, trade secrets, and power plays of the visionaries, grunts, sociopaths, opportunists,
accidental tourists, and money cowboys who are revolutionizing our world.
>
Gethin Darklord
5.0 out of 5 stars
Revalatory
epistole from Silicon Valley
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 29, 2018
Verified Purchase
I really enjoyed this book which falls into two sections: before the author's
employment with Facebook and afterwards until he is fired. Mr Martinez comes across as a very self centered but brilliant
tech geek and whilst unappealing as a friend his frank discussions of his thoughts give an unusual degree of insight into
his character; and of those like him. He actually manages to explain how Facebook makes its money which is something I have
never understood before. His assertion they wouldn't share your data is charmingly Naive in the wake of the Cambridge
Analytica scandal (2019) - the book was written some years before.
Ultimately
it takes bravery to write frankly about one's own failures and this makes it distinct from the hagiographies and self
congratulatory books which characterize most business books.
An interesting aside is his obvious erudition with well chosen classical quotations
at the head of each chapter. Recommended highly.
>
Amazingly
accurate coverage of Facebook's internal culture, the good, the bad, and the ugly. (Plus much, much more!)
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazingly
accurate coverage of Facebook's internal culture, the good, the bad, and the ugly. (Plus much, much more!)
Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2016
Verified Purchase
I worked at Facebook from 2010 until 2015, and until now I have never seen the inner
machinations as accurately portrayed as they are in 'Chaos Monkeys'. Facebook very carefully maintains a public relations
campaign (almost more internally focused than external) to convince the world it is the best place to work ever. In reality it
is just like any other large company, with plenty of political intrigue, infighting, silo-building, and collateral damage. Sure,
the mini-kitchens have organic bananas, and pistachios that stressed slobby software engineers neither have to shell, nor leave a
pile of shells littered all around the floor... but in reality they are shackled to an oar, pulling to the endless beat of a
drum. Code. Code. Code. It is all here the creepy propaganda, the failed high-profile projects, the surreal manager/staff
relationships, the cultivated cult-like atmosphere, the sharp divide between the have-it-all, and the "hope to have enough to
escape" staff. The bizarro world of inside FB, around the IPO. I was there and experienced many of the same corporate events and
milestones myself. Antonio Garcia Martinez captures it all perfectly.
That's only the last half of the book.
The rest is a tale of escaping from startup hell, making a go at reaching startup heaven, then making deals to salvage it all
when reaching the critical trial-by-fire that every startup must face: die, execute flawlessly, or exit.
There are some who will find the tone, the voice, or the political incorrectness of both to be too harsh to digest. I've already
seen that in a few of the reviews here. To them I say "grow up"... put on your big boy/girl pants and read this for the story.
The tale it tells. The facts it presents. The data with which it backs it all up. Because it is all true. The exposition of
complex systems are described using appropriate, and facile metaphors. Many of the standard Facebook tropes ("stealing/selling
your data", "Zuck is evil", etc.) are explained for the misleading baloney that they are. Best of all it describes how the
advertising media really operates, going back to the dawn of it, and how Facebook, Google, et al are merely extensions of a
system that has existed for two centuries. It is worth the purchase price for that lesson alone, all wrapped in a great, and true
story.
For myself, having lived through much of the same experience at Facebook (from onboarding, the devotion, the cynicism, to the
inglorious, frustrated exit bungled by one of the legion of Facebook's incompetent and narcissistic manager corps) I found myself
going from laughter, to nodding agreement, to gut-wrenching bouts of PTSD as I turned the pages of 'Chaos Monkeys'. Now I no
longer have to justify myself to people who ask me why I left Facebook - I can just tell them to read this book, since it
explains it better than I ever could.
>
1.0 out of 5 stars
Whiny
Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2019
Verified Purchase
The author seems to be a very bitter and acerbic individual with huge collection of
chips on his shoulder, from past coworkers to the capitalism itself. It is rare to encounter a character in his book to
which he doesn't find something contemptuous or negative to say about. Even when describing genuinely positive things -
like courage, loyalty or generosity - he seems to be astonished that these puny humans he despises so much are capable of
such things. I can't remember any character (including the mother of his children) who is described with genuine warmth and
affection, then best he could master is "that person could be useful to me in certain situations".
While the protagonist seems to be entirely driven by monetary incentives, he does not forget to regularly interrupt his
quest for a lengthy tirade about how capitalism is the worst (usually on the way to convince some capitalists to give him
some money so he could participate in capitalist venture and make some money for himself).
The author undoubtedly has a knack for storytelling and a keen eye (usually turned to finding faults in everything he
sees), so there are many interesting and entertaining bits in the book. But the overall negativity and constant droning of
the author about how everything around him is wrong from the mere atoms upwards is really wearing you down. I understand
that's sort of "here's what I am without any makeup, take it or leave it" but I really wish the it wasn't a whiny
narcissistic nihilist...
>
Insightful,
hilarious and accurate take on the insanity of silicon valley
5.0 out of 5 stars
Insightful,
hilarious and accurate take on the insanity of silicon valley
Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2016
Verified Purchase
Chaos Monkeys is a bargain, since you are really getting four books in one. First, our
lucky reader is treated to a Sherman-style total war on the vanities and conceits of the tech elite. For the hater in all of us,
it is uncompromised, savage delight. He particularly takes aim at noxious myth of meritocracy in the valley. As anywhere, those
educated at the right places, and taught the right diction and manner of speaking rise to the top. For whatever reason, people in
silicon valley seem to need reminding of this fairly often, perhaps more than most.
Another skewered vanity is that the work being done there is "changing the world." The nirvana of being paid millions while doing
meaningful work is the final privilege being sought by the waves of wall street refugees making their way out west. Only the most
self-deluded really buy it, and as Antonio shows, those often happen to be working at the most influential and powerful
companies. Is Facebook really changing the world? Without question, but when Facebook uses the language of historical figures,
implicitly placing itself on the same podium as Cato the elder, say, it is both creepy and pathetic. Furthermore, the same gulf
between the windfalls of the upper echelon and the rank-and-file is still present.
The second book is a detailed, unsparing deep-dive into the trenches of the ad tech industry. Just for that, it is worth reading
if your job has any remote connection with selling online. You will come away with more awareness of how pixels convert to
dollars. This theme occupies most of the second half of the book. If anything, the vivid metaphors he uses to describe the
otherwise dull and esoteric details of identity matching and attribution will serve you well anytime you must summon a complete
picture of this complex web in your head. Even non-specialists will find fascinating the descriptions of how private data is
collected and sold, not to mention probably realizing they have been worried about the wrong kind of privacy violations.
Third, there is a marvelous how-to guide for aspiring entrepreneurs hidden between the diatribes. Antonio managed to meet many of
the key players in the industry. His detailed accounts of many of these meetings (confrontations) offer a unique
behind-the-scenes vantage which many manuals for silicon valley success avoid, so the authors can remain in good stead with the
figures involved. In addition, there is another way that Chaos Monkeys serves as an excellent preview of what entrepreneurship
entails. Other how-to books are so smitten with the idea of entrepreneur as Hero that they often fail to convey the tedium,
anxiety and chaos that are most of the day-to-day realities for any entrepreneur. These other books mention that building a
company is hard and stressful, but often seem shy to mention exactly why, beyond executing a bad idea, or a linear increase in
working hours. In reality, the unspoken "hard" part of any startup is not the actual hours involved, or the idea, or execution,
but rather the unwavering conviction you must have to keep at it when things are totally falling apart. The struggle to convince
yourself, your investors and your customers that your vision of the world is the correct one is constant war against entropy,
counterfactuals, competitors or self-doubts. Any of these must be swallowed, digested, shat out, and freeze-dried as more grist
for your sales pitch mill. Every entrepreneur will immediately recognize what Antonio unabashedly portrays: the dreadful gulf
between the inward awareness of all the chaos and flux at the startup, while preserving the outward image of polish, order and
optimism. In fact, the delusion of performing world-changing work as an entrepreneur (even when you're just building a s***ty
analytics panel) is so pervasive, it cannot be solely attributed to narcissism. The book makes the point that this delusion is
actually an emotional coping mechanism to endure the aforementioned doublethink on a daily basis.
Finally, we are given an intimate, unsentimental portrait of Antonio's tortured psyche. While I wouldn't necessarily advocate
"praying for Antonio's soul," as a previous reviewer stated, his relentless self-deprecation and raw honesty balance out some of
the selfish decisions he makes in the book. He is extremely well read, and I suspect this background informs a somewhat tragic
theme of the book -- for a certain type of person, the only hope that can lift the cynicism and misanthropy of early life
disappointment is to undergo a meaningful quest with loyal companions. There aren't many of those quests around anymore,
unfortunately, nor is there a surfeit of loyal companions in the sort of places and professions that demand one's full faculties.
In the book, many characters and causes fail to meet this high bar, of course. I suspect more than a few failed idealists will
find a kindred spirit in Antonio, despite the caustic tone throughout. That said, there is plenty here to be offended about, if
that is your sort of thing. Some of the criticism is justified. For example, there is some objectification of women that could
have been omitted. However, if that is your ONLY take-away, then you are precisely the sort of self-important, thin-skinned
windbag that is rightfully skewered in Chaos Monkeys.
>
3.0 out of 5 stars
Silicon
Valley: Operating Instructions or Expose?
Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2017
Verified Purchase
It's an interesting read as most reviews indicate is basically two books in one. The first
"book" is about the world of Silicon Valley incubators and small start-ups. That takes up the first half of the story. The tale
is close to reality as anyone involved in the SV start-up world can attest. It is full of the excess, hype, positioning,
politics, back-stabbing and intrigue that is so commonplace. Somewhere in that mix is technology most of which is not even close
to revolutionary but likely to be useful to someone. The trick is to make that "someone" seem like a really big someone who is
dying to spend a lot of money. Then after getting investors to buy in ... keep selling. This is all well and entertainingly
covered in the book. The second "book" covers the author's life at Facebook pre- and post-IPO. Like all companies, Facebook has
its own dysfunctionalities. The dysfunctionalities that the author experienced at Facebook were not the sort he felt comfortable
with. He also felt like his ideas were far better than anything Facebook came up with and that they were idiots for not listening
to him. Maybe they were but they, as he begrudgingly indicated, seemed to do OK pursuing a different approach. Because the second
half seemed to be more about "how stupid Facebook was" and "how smart he was", it served to be far less entertaining and
enlightening than the first half mostly because I didn't care that he was being ignored and that he felt like he didn't fit in.
You can read this book two ways - especially the first half. It can be consumed as an expose showing the shallow nature and
hollow core of the Silicon Valley gold rush or a "how to" book for fledgling entrepreneurs going after the incubator and investor
dollars. And then you can skip that second half.
VINE VOICE
5.0 out of 5 stars
Surprisingly
informative and a good read
Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2016
Verified Purchase
I bought this book on a whim as it looked like an interesting take on the inner workings of
the world of start ups as well as insights into the machinations at Facebook. Having worked for some big-ish technology companies
and now playing in the start up world I expected to get some fairly vanilla anecdotes about the ups and downs of life in the
Valley and the personalities who make the headlines.
Initially, I was not sure how the story was going to play out as the author started out with some of the later FB meetings and
the goings on in his private life. This book was not going to find its way into any college class on entrepreneurship! Happily,
the story then moves into 2 distinct phases - life in startup hell and life in big company hell. Antonio Garcia Martinez goes on
to tell it how it really is - no matter where the chips fall or who he may insult on the way through. And - he does this in an
articulate and informative way, whether discussing personalities or the arcane inner workings of ad-serving technology.
Bottom line - this book is a very authentic description of the way the tech ecosystem works. Whether discussing option vesting,
the randomness of successful product development, the lot of a product manager (the man in the middle), the venture capital
roundabout, the modus operandi of corp dev folks (that would be me) Martinez captures it accurately - f-bombs and all.
>
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fear
and Loathing in Silicon Valley
Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2016
Verified Purchase
Were it not for the possibility of legal complications, Chaos Monkeys could have been
titled "Fear and Loathing in Silicon Valley." It is a unique blend of high stakes gambling, sex, alcohol and hubris. For those
willing to wade through technical detail, it shows how Internet applications like Facebook and Google convert pixels into
dollars. For the rest of us, the story of the excruciatingly hard work and intense drama that go into both a startup company and
the internal machinations of an established, aggressive hi-tech company provide plenty of drama.
Garcia Martinez is obviously widely read. His well chosen chapter heading quotes and references to disparate sources make that
clear. His writing is articulate, fast paced, intense and focused. The fact that he names names and gives an insider perspective
to well known events makes the story an especially interesting one.
Having been sucked in, ground up and spit out of the Silicon Valley madness, Garcia Martinez is talking about taking off on a
circumnavigation aboard his sailboat. One cannot help but wonder if he can make the change from the pressure and fast pace of his
old existence to the new. I hope so.
>
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliantly
written and refreshingly honest
Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2016
Verified Purchase
Mr. Martinez chronicle's of his career in Silicon Valley is entertaining, refreshingly
honest and of historical significance. The first part of the book details his time at AdGrok, a startup of no great consequence,
where he cut his teeth in Silicon Valley. It is a tale of ambition, greed, irreverence, vengeance and betrayal, sprinkled with
enough kindness and chutzpah to keep even the less morbid reader engaged. The second part of the book chronicles Mr. Martinez
career in Facebook, as a member of the nascent Ads team. It is a fascinating and unforgiving account of the culture and
personalities that propelled Facebook to profitability. Of historical significance is the brilliant description of the evolution
of the surprisingly technical world of Internet advertisement, written in the first person by someone who had a hand in its
shaping. The tale is interesting in of itself but the book is made by Mr. Martinez prose. His writing is articulate, witty and
erudite. Most importantly, in a world where BS is a major currency, Mr. Martinez's voice is a breath of fresh air in its
irreverence and honesty. He spares nothing and no one: SV Feminists, SJWs, greedy VCs, sycophant middle managers and sociopath
CEOs. I suspect many readers will be turned off by his candor, but I for one thoroughly enjoyed his genuine, if sometimes coarse,
voice. I wish Mr. Martinez all the best in his nautical adventures and best of luck in his literary career - it is hard to
imagine he can come back to technology after this.
>
Chaos Monkeys takes you through the culture, the contradictions and, as the title would suggest, the chaos in which Silicon
Valley is apparently wrapped. Antonio Garcia Martinez makes a charming guide: funny, literate and with a rakish sense of humor
that gives this insider's account a kind of immediacy and real emotional punch. I got the kind of lift from reading this book
that I once did when reading the rollicking prose of Tom Wolfe, who was also a chronicler of the earliest corporate cultures that
defined California and the Valley. Martinez, like Wolfe, offers keen cultural observations that spring from our very human
strivings and persistent ambitions.
This book delivers a lot. We learn much about Antonio's personal life, his history, his loves (several women and a couple boats),
his avocations, his strengths (which include his gift for writing and other forms of persuasion as well as his canny negotiating
powers) and his weaknesses (his impulsiveness and his willingness to shade the truth a bit when it serves his purposes). But this
account is hardly a highly varnished one, and he casts his critical capacities inward on several occasions. We might prudently
reserve some suspicions about the strict veracity of a gifted story-teller like Martinez, but I find this account has the ring of
truth and he holds the mirror close to the his own face.
But the book is also a compendium of information, anecdotes and personal portraits of an important scene in American business
history. All this, of course, relates to the "obscene fortune and random failure in Silicon Valley" advertised in the book's
subtitle. Though many reviewers damn this aspect with faint praise, calling it gossipy, I myself found it substantive, detailed
and instructive about a slice of entrepreneurial and investment activity that is not really well known or understood by many who
might like to know. What's involved in a bona fide start-up? What are the aims of venture capitalists, who variously smile or
frown on these endeavors? When the corporate development types from Twitter and Facebook come calling, what are they seeking and
what are they offering? Martinez reliably spills the beans in this regard, naming names, pegging salaries and calculating
compensation packages out over two-, three- and four-year time horizons. Enquiring minds want to know. And in the end there is
really more random failure than obscene fortune. And I think Martinez would likely agree and especially as it applied to him
personally.
As a sort of footnote (and, by the way, Martinez likes footnotes very much, as do I), let me advise the potential reader that
this book also takes a fairly deep dive into advertising technology. And this, too, is really a big economic and business story
of our time. Open your newspaper (or however you take your news these days) and you'll likely read about the disruptive influence
of the Internet, mobile technology and all things digital on those reliable engines of the 20th century economy: media and
advertising. It's a story literally told daily. Old models are rapidly shrinking and new ones shape-shifting at the present
moment. Many think Google and Facebook own this future, although that's probably premature. Make no mistake about it though;
Martinez knows this scene up close and personal. He was toiling daily for several years, working simultaneously at both the work
of destruction and the act of creation, in the very belly of the beast. I venture an opinion that there are few people who know
more about this brave new world of digital persuasion than Antonio Garcia Martinez.
Bottom line: This book has been my favorite summer read by far. It entertained as it informed. I heartily recommend it.
>
Subtly
blistering takedown of frauds, charlatans, and stooges.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Subtly
blistering takedown of frauds, charlatans, and stooges.
Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2017
Verified Purchase
"He's such a cynic." A favorite phrase of the deluded and dishonest used to invalidate the
perspectives and arguments of someone who's figured them out. I suppose it depends on how you define a cynic, and I tend to think
of cynicism as a condition where one knows the price of everything but can't see or won't accept the value. While I don't know
Antonio, I'm pretty sure he's not that. Time and again throughout his book, you see a guy who's just refreshingly skeptical of
the inflated value others put on both themselves and the technology they make or manage.
I enjoyed the narrative structure of the book, which starts somewhat close to the end--in a scene that nails the sad banality of
every corporate meeting ever--then jumps back in time to lay the foundation for later decisions (and effectively explains
complexities of high finance), and diverts into a mixture of expository asides, personal experiences and workplace politics. This
aspect is chaotic, and often pleonastic, and might annoy some. Overall I appreciated it, possibly because I can't stay on a
single topic for that long myself. Roughly, Antonio focuses on the day-to-day realities of cutting deals in the first half, and
the day-to-day realities of building and shipping product throughout the rest. There are some blistering insights, too, notably
the take-down of entitled Bay Area "feminists" and basic lessons on realities of capitalism and startups and investors. He's got
a knack for capturing personalities, and his vocabulary is impressive, at least to a rube such as myself.
As to the narrative: You can't help but think that the old adage that life is high school extended applies here. Or really, as
Tom Brokaw put it, life is junior high, filled with people drowning in pettiness, insecurities, and irrelevant rivalries over
imagined and exaggerated slights. This, of course, can be discarded as a cynical take on things but it's not intended to
be--we're all prone to mistakes, losing our tempers, and feeling fraudulent or irrationally immature while harboring (hopefully
only briefly) silly grudges. And it's okay. It happens. It's what people in all of their flawed glory frequently do.
The problem, however, with so many companies in the tech world is that their leadership often assumes they're somehow removed
from such pedestrian afflictions. That they are about more than what it is they actually do, that they're better, and that they
warrant their wealth and status. And this delusion would be comical if it wasn't so corrosive. For Antonio to call things what
they actually are--more than just "calling it as he sees it" but actually behaving like the scientist he is, discerning what's
going on, and explaining the discovery--isn't cynical. It's realistic. And it's a frightening, problematic reality that,
curiously, many seem to be okay with.
I understand that if you launch a startup, you have to deliver soaring platitudes about grander meaning and purpose, because you
can't offer wildly valuable stock units and enormous salaries to experienced people who can do the job but know better than to
believe the BS or indulge the risk. The comparison of early-stage startups to combat units he makes might be stretching it some,
but the stress is at least along the same lines, if only conceptually. I also enjoyed how he explained how after a startup
succeeds and transitions into the establishment, that to keep shareholders/investors happy, leadership has to make
bold-yet-credible-sounding promises about a vision that drives future growth. Thus, Facebook will continue to talk about
connection and community, and Google will talk about "billion people problems" and do everything possible to mask that their
inner machinations mostly consist of capturing behavioral data and predicting purchasing decisions, and selling that to peddlers
of largely insipid nonsense.
I kept relating the various parables in Chaos Monkeys to Game of Thrones plot-lines and characters. In that show, my favorites
are Arya and Bronn--an assassin and a mercenary, both with a different ethos but each resolutely self-deterministic, and each
capable of living according to their own principles without playing the power games that consume and crush so many others.
They're good models to follow if you choose to enter this world. I got into the tech industry because I love the challenges and
working with curious, intelligent people. It is mostly fulfilling and worthwhile, and I accept that my chances of Fast Company
glory are nil. After reading this, I feel "pretty good" about my decision, and am glad to have a greater understanding of what
founders deal with.
"... "Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience." ..."
"... all those responsible for this plandemic are guilty of crimes against humanity. ..."
"Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant
conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs
and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting
people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience."
Indeed. Dr. Fauxi is a quack and the medical establishment has lost all credibility.
GoodyGumdrops 15 hours ago
Fauci is an evil psychopath and all those responsible for this plandemic are guilty of
crimes against humanity.
This is starting to look really like staging of "Brave new world..." Today's society is
closer to Huxley's "Brave New World" than to Orwell's "1984". But there are clear elements of
both. If you will, the worst of both worlds has come true today.
In 1949, sometime after the publication of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four , Aldous
Huxley, the author of Brave New World (1931), who was then living in California, wrote to
Orwell. Huxley had briefly taught French to Orwell as a student in high school at Eton.
Huxley generally praises Orwell's novel, which to many seemed very similar to Brave New
World in its dystopian view of a possible future. Huxley politely voices his opinion that his
own version of what might come to pass would be truer than Orwell's. Huxley observed that the
philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is sadism, whereas his own version is
more likely, that controlling an ignorant and unsuspecting public would be less arduous, less
wasteful by other means. Huxley's masses are seduced by a mind-numbing drug, Orwell's with
sadism and fear.
The most powerful quote In Huxley's letter to Orwell is this:
Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant
conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs
and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting
people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.
Aldous Huxley.
Could Huxley have more prescient? What do we see around us?
Masses of people dependent upon drugs, legal and illegal. The majority of advertisements
that air on television seem to be for prescription drugs, some of them miraculous but most of
them unnecessary. Then comes COVID, a quite possibly weaponized virus from the
Fauci-funded-with-taxpayer-dollars lab in Wuhan, China. The powers that be tragically deferred
to the malevolent Fauci who had long been hoping for just such an opportunity. Suddenly, there
was an opportunity to test the mRNA vaccines that had been in the works for nearly twenty
years. They could be authorized as an emergency measure but were still highly experimental.
These jabs are not really vaccines at all, but a form of gene therapy . There
are potential
disastrous consequences down the road. Government experiments on the public are
nothing new .
Since there have been no actual, long-term trials, no one who contributed to this massive
drug experiment knows what the long-term consequences might be. There have been countless
adverse injuries and deaths already for which the government-funded vaccine producers will
suffer no liability. With each passing day, new side-effects have begun to appear: blood clots,
seizures, heart failure.
As new adverse reactions become known despite the censorship employed by most media outlets,
the more the Biden administration is pushing the vaccine, urging private corporations to make
it mandatory for all employees. Colleges are making them mandatory for all students returning
to campus.
The leftmedia are advocating the "shunning" of the unvaccinated. The self-appointed
virtue-signaling Democrats are furious at anyone and everyone who declines the jab. Why? If
they are protected, why do they care? That is the question. Same goes for the ridiculous mask
requirements . They protect no one but for those in operating rooms with their insides
exposed, yet even the vaccinated are supposed to wear them!
Months ago, herd immunity was near. Now Fauci and the CDC say it will never be achieved? Now
the Pfizer shot will necessitate yearly booster shots. Pfizer
expects to make $21B this year from its COVID vaccine! Anyone who thinks this isn't about
money is a fool. It is all about money, which is why Fauci, Gates, et al. were so determined to
convince the public that HCQ and ivermectin, both of which are effective, prophylactically and
as treatment, were not only useless, but dangerous. Both of those drugs are tried, true, and
inexpensive. Many of those thousands of N.Y. nursing home fatalities might have been prevented
with the use of one or both of those drugs. Those deaths are on the hands of Cuomo and his
like-minded tyrants drunk on power.
Months ago, Fauci, et al. agreed that children were at little or no risk of getting COVID,
of transmitting it, least of all dying from it. Now Fauci is demanding that all teens be
vaccinated by the end of the year! Why? They are no more in danger of contracting it now than
they were a year ago. Why are parents around this country not standing up to prevent their kids
from being guinea pigs in this monstrous medical experiment? And now they are " experimenting
" on infants. Needless to say, some have died. There is no reason on Earth for teens, children,
and infants to be vaccinated. Not one.
Huxley also wrote this:
"The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they
will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be
able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' -- this is the height
of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats ."
Perhaps this explains the left's hysterical impulse to force these untested shots on those
of us who have made the decision to go without it. If they've decided that it is the thing to
do, then all of us must submit to their whims. If we decide otherwise, it gives them the
righteous right to smear all of us whom they already deplore.
As C.J. Hopkins has
written , the left means to criminalize dissent. Those of us who are vaccine-resistant are
soon to be outcasts, deprived of jobs and entry into everyday businesses. This kind of
discrimination should remind everyone of ...oh, Germany three quarters of a century ago. Huxley
also wrote, "The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other
sets of people are human." That is precisely what the left is up to, what BLM is planning, what
Critical Race Theory is all about.
Tal Zaks, Moderna's chief medical officer, said these new vaccines are "hacking the
software of life." Vaccine-promoters claim he never said this, but he did. Bill Gates called
the vaccines " an operating
system " to the horror of those promoting it, a Kinsley gaffe. Whether it is or isn't
hardly matters at this point, but these statements by those behind the vaccines are a clue to
what they have in mind.
There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love
their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears , so to speak, producing a kind of
painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their
liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it.
This is exactly what the left is working so hard to effect: a pharmacologically compromised
population happy to be taken care of by a massive state machine. And while millions of people
around the world have surrendered to the vaccine and mask hysteria, millions more, about 1.3
billion, want no part of this government vaccine mania.
In his letter to Orwell, Huxley ended with the quote cited above and again here because it
is so profound:
Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant
conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs
and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting
people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.
Huxley nailed the left more than seventy years ago, perhaps because leftists have never
changed throughout the ages. 61,497 173
Fat Beaver 14 hours ago (Edited)
If i am to be treated as an outcast or an undesirable because i refuse the vax, i will
immediately become someone that has zero reverence for the law, and i can only imagine 10's
of millions will be right there with me.
strych10 14 hours ago
Welcome to the club.
We have coffee in the corner and occasional meetings at various bars.
Dr. Chihuahua-González 13 hours ago
I'm a doctor, you could contact me anytime and receive your injection.
Fat Beaver 13 hours ago (Edited)
I've gotta feeling the normie world you think you live in is about to change drastically
for the worse...
sparky139 PREMIUM 10 hours ago
You mean you'll sign papers that you injected us *wink *wink? And toss it away?
bothneither 2 hours ago
Oh geez how uncommon, another useless doctor with no Scruples who sold out to big Pharma.
Please have my Gates sponsored secret sauce.
Unknown 6 hours ago (Edited)
Both Huxley and Orwell are wrong. Neoliberalism (the use of once office for personal
gains) is by far the most powerful force that subjugates the inept population. Neoliberalism
demolished the mighty USSR, now destroying the USA, and will do the same to China. And this
poison dribbles from the top to bottom creating self-centered population that is unable to
unite, much less resist.
Deathrips 15 hours ago (Edited) remove link
Tylers.
You gonna cover Tucker Carlsons show earlier today on FOX news about vaxxx deaths? almost 4k
reported so far this year.
Is the population of india up in arms or is the MSM?
Nelbev 10 hours ago
Facebook just flagged/censored it, must sign into see vid, Tuck also failed to mention
mRNA and adenovirus vaxes were experimental and not FDA approved nor gone through stage III
trials. Beside deaths, have blood clot issues. Good he mentioned how naturally immune if get
covid and recovered, better than vaccine, but not covered for bogus passports. Me personally,
I would rather catch covid and get natural immunity than be vaccinated with an untested
experimental vaccine.
Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya; Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche; Dr. Ron Brown; Dr. Ryan Cole; Dr.
Richard Fleming; Dr. Simone Gold; Dr. Sunetra Gupta; Dr. Carl Heneghan; Dr. Martin Kulldorff;
Dr. Paul Marik; Dr. Peter McCullough; Dr. Joseph Mercola; Dr. Lee Merritt; Dr. Judy Mikovits;
Dr. Dennis Modry; Dr. Hooman Noorchashm; Dr. Harvey Risch; Dr. Sherri Tenpenny; Dr. Richard
Urso; Dr. Michael Yeadon;
Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya; Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche; Dr. Ron Brown; Dr. Ryan Cole; Dr.
Richard Fleming; Dr. Simone Gold; Dr. Sunetra Gupta; Dr. Carl Heneghan; Dr. Martin Kulldorff;
Dr. Paul Marik; Dr. Peter McCullough; Dr. Joseph Mercola; Dr. Lee Merritt; Dr. Judy Mikovits;
Dr. Dennis Modry; Dr. Hooman Noorchashm; Dr. Harvey Risch; Dr. Sherri Tenpenny; Dr. Richard
Urso; Dr. Michael Yeadon;
His making of the gamma and delta workforce was quite prescient. We are seeing it play out
now, we all know gammas and delta. There was a really good ABC tv movie made in 1980 Brave
New World. Excellent show, it shows the Alphas and names them Rothchild and so on. Shows what
these people specifically want to do to the world. I wonder if the ruling psychopaths
actually wait for science fiction authors to plan the future and then follow their
script.
Mineshaft Gap 10 hours ago
If Huxley were starting out today no major publisher would touch him.
They'd tell him Brave New World doesn't have a diverse enough of cast. Even the mostly
likable totalitarian guy named Mustapha turns out to be white! A white Mustapha. It's soooo
triggering. Also, what's wrong with a little electronic fun and drug taking, anyway? Lighten
up , Aldous.
Meanwhile his portrait of shrieking medieval Catholic nuns who think they're possessed in
The Devils of Loudun might remind the leftist editors too uncomfortably of their own recent
bleating performances at "White Fragility" struggle sessions.
An award-winning journalist investigates Amazon's impact on the wealth and poverty of
towns and cities across the United States.
In 1937, the famed writer and activist Upton Sinclair published a novel bearing the subtitle
A Story of Ford-America . He blasted the callousness of a company worth "a billion
dollars" that underpaid its workers while forcing them to engage in repetitive and sometimes
dangerous assembly line labor. Eighty-three years later, the market capitalization of
Amazon.com has exceeded one trillion dollars, while the value of the Ford Motor Company
hovers around thirty billion. We have, it seems, entered the age of one-click America―and
as the coronavirus makes Americans more dependent on online shopping, its sway will only
intensify.
Alec MacGillis's Fulfillment is not another inside account or exposé of our
most conspicuously dominant company. Rather, it is a literary investigation of the America that
falls within that company's growing shadow. As MacGillis shows, Amazon's sprawling network of
delivery hubs, data centers, and corporate campuses epitomizes a land where winner and loser
cities and regions are drifting steadily apart, the civic fabric is unraveling, and work has
become increasingly rudimentary and isolated.
Ranging across the country, MacGillis tells the stories of those who've thrived and
struggled to thrive in this rapidly changing environment. In Seattle, high-paid workers in new
office towers displace a historic black neighborhood. In suburban Virginia, homeowners try to
protect their neighborhood from the environmental impact of a new data center. Meanwhile, in El
Paso, small office supply firms seek to weather Amazon's takeover of government procurement,
and in Baltimore a warehouse supplants a fabled steel plant. Fulfillment also shows how
Amazon has become a force in Washington, D.C., ushering readers through a revolving door for
lobbyists and government contractors and into CEO Jeff Bezos's lavish Kalorama mansion.
With empathy and breadth, MacGillis demonstrates the hidden human costs of the other
inequality―not the growing gap between rich and poor, but the gap between the country's
winning and losing regions. The result is an intimate account of contemporary capitalism: its
drive to innovate, its dark, pitiless magic, its remaking of America with every click.
" Fulfillment vividly details the devastating costs of Amazon's dominance and brutal
business practices, showcasing an economy that has concentrated in private hands staggering
wealth and power while impoverishing workers, crushing independent business, and supplanting
public governance with private might. A critical read." ―Lina Khan, associate
professor at Columbia Law School and author of Amazon's Antitrust Paradox
"Anyone who orders from Amazon needs to read these moving and enraging stories of how one
person's life savings, one life's work, one multigenerational tradition, one small business,
one town after another, are demolished by one company's seemingly unstoppable machine. They are
all the more enraging because Alec MacGillis shows so clearly how things could have been
different." ―Larissa MacFarquhar, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of
Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the
Overpowering Urge to Help
"Alec MacGillis practices journalism with ambition, tenacity, and empathy that will command
your awe. Like one of the great nineteenth-century novels, Fulfillment studies a social
ill with compelling intimacy and panoramic thoroughness. In the process, Jeff Bezos's dominance
and its costs are made real―and it becomes impossible to one-click again the same."
―Franklin Foer, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of World Without
Mind
"For a generation, inequality has been rising relentlessly in the United States―not
just inequality of income and wealth, but also inequality of power and geography. In
Fulfillment , Alec MacGillis brings this crisis vividly alive by creating a broad
tableau of the way one giant company, Amazon, affects the lives of people and places across the
country. This book should be read as a call to action against the new economy's continuing
assault on working people, small businesses, and left-behind places." ―Nicholas
Lemann, author of Transaction Man
" Fulfillment addresses the human impact of current technologies and economic
inequality with rare power. People in tech don't often think about the ramifications of their
work; Alec MacGillis reminds us that it has consequences, and that even if there are no clear
solutions, we have a moral imperative to consider its effects." ―Craig Newmark,
founder of craigslist
Alec MacGillis is a senior reporter for ProPublica and the recipient of the
George Polk Award, the Robin Toner prize, and other honors. He worked previously at The
Washington Post , Baltimore Sun , and The New Republic , and his journalism
has appeared in The New York Times Magazine , The New Yorker , The
Atlantic , and other publications. His ProPublica reporting on Dayton, Ohio was the
basis of a PBS Frontline documentary about the city. He is the author of The Cynic , a
2014 biography of Mitch McConnell. He lives in Baltimore.
All of these "advancements" are around removing face-to-face interaction with other people.
Whether work-from-home, automated rental & purchase, retail goods delivered, etc. Curious
what long term impact this seemingly exponential shift toward human interaction as personal
irritant is doing to our social cohesion.
Is standing in a line always a burden or is it sometimes a benefit? Sure, sometimes I just
want to do my business and go but have also met fascinating people while in lines. I'm assuming
many of the people working at that ski resort are "ski bums" who used the job as a way to
fulfill their skiing lifestyle. They are a part of the skiing culture that has been removed
from the experience now. So many local jobs are being removed and replaced by tech jobs. We
barely have local community left and it's being replaced with, what? Social media? I'm a big
fan of our online communities here at NC so it's not all bad of course.
Yes, change is inevitable and much of this is convenient but just curious what it's doing to
us as a society. Maybe it's allowing us more time to focus on closer social bonds we've already
developed? Less time in lines or stores means more time with friends and family?
Our prior ways weren't exactly healthy so honestly I don't know if this will lead to better
ways or push us further apart. Any insights or ideas are appreciated. Just been pondering it
and curious what other think.
"In a system that generates masses, individualism is the only way out. But then what happens
to community -- to society?" – Jeanette Winterson
Maybe it's allowing us more time to focus on closer social bonds we've already developed?
Less time in lines or stores means more time with friends and family?
The social bond with your doctor is pretty important I would say. As it is with your local
bookseller or grocery store. They are all people too, and being face to face with them you
build more trust and compassion. This helps us both in times of hardship
I'll take the most dire view here (someone has to!):
Every step this society takes away from face-to-face interaction, and therefore community
and fellowship, is going to proportionally increase the death rate when the rolling disasters
of our era arrive properly at our shore.
I wish I could reach out and shake everyone who is like "I interact with people too much
already, this enforced isolation is GREAT!" don't they realize this philosophy might
kill them? In the upcoming chaos, if they're an unknown unknown to the people around
them, don't they realize they'll be all too easy to leave behind or even sacrifice??
This seems to be the path our society is absolutely determined to take – so be it.
Even NC is posting articles that are more or less cheering it. But as for me, I will rage, rage
against the dying of the light.
Found myself in a rather long line (no complaints) last Sat. for 2nd Covid vaccine. Realized
later that between the long line waiting and the after waiting to leave it was probably the
most people interaction I've had for over a year! We are social creatures. Our system preaches
"individualism" because that is the only way the "instant profit" system can operate. There are
other ways; our ruling classes opt out of those and the general population becomes muddled
instead.
"Modernity" and "AI" technology is great but if u have no human interaction eventually those
traits leave and you have what???? A dead society.
And with every step forward there is a step backward. Going digital across the board is not
always good as it takes away privacy and I have an example here. There is a linked article in
Links today called "Are punitive rules forcing doctors to hide their mental health problems?"
In it, a young doctor is under enormous mental stress and turns to older doctors for advice.
They 'advised her to drive out of town, pay cash and use a pseudonym if she needed to talk
to someone.' If most transaction were done digitally, how would this doctor and others like
her go for help without endangering their jobs? What options would they have?
In cases like this, the only 'options' allowed will be "official" options. As my
misguided attempt at "therapy" years ago taught me, often times, the analyst can be toxic.
Also, in a mental health setting, I encountered the "official" preference for medication
over 'therapy.' Both are situations that put the 'authority's' preferences above the
patients. One big way I eventually 'twigged' to the dystopian dynamic was in observing the
attitudes and body language of the "health care professionals" I was dealing with.
Electronica and devices have no agency, and no "body language." The entire process is
removing useful tools for the patient to navigate the shoals and reefs where the sharks
hang out in any bureaucracy.
The other, knock on effect of telemedicine we encountered was that the charges for
electronic "office visits" have not dropped. This is analogous to when a grocery store
keeps the cost of an individual item stable and reduces the package size.
Others have said it better than I, but it bears repeating; 'modern' methods are reducing
people to the status of 'things.' Just as in the process of reducing a person or group of
people to the status of "other," the next step is 'removal.'
Cash is agency. The spying may be efficient, but its main purpose is to take away
agency. Just like "software as a service" or "in the cloud", when you could just as easily
have the same functionality on your device which you own. The vendors don't want that. They
want to control you.
The only alternative is to support and keep alive businesses that accept customers with
cash and agency. And boycott the rest. Even if it is inconvenient!
Yay, less human interaction, more isolation, fewer seasonal jobs for high school or college
students. More magical technological solutions that the on-site staff has no idea how to fix
when they stop working. You're too busy and important to stand in line! That's socialism! Let's
tell everyone that they're risking imminent death by being around other people and then sell
them ways to avoid it!
The U.S. exported its production of goods and became a "service" economy or a "knowledge"
economy. Thanks to Corona much of the service employment has become virtual. Knowledge workers
can now work from home. How many knowledge workers possess knowledge unique to the U.S. and how
many could be replaced by remote workers from somewhere else?
This post describes changes, some of which may prove temporary and others may prove
permanent. I believe most of the changes and their longer term implications require time to
fully unfold. I am not fond of virtual service. I order online from the independent vendors
still around as Amazon, E-Bay, Etsy, and other platforms grind them down, but how long will
they remain independent? The U.S. Postal Service is under attack and when it falls to
privatization what kind of e-commerce will come after that? Cashless means exposed to me --
exposed to tracking and monitoring and exposed to theft from the shadows.
I don't understand the rush to eliminating cash. Cash is the last way to opt out of
commercial control. People seem to positively embrace it, and I don't get it.
(Exception: I understand why legal cash-business owners like the idea.)
I hear crime prevention and money laundering prevention as reasons. The first is code
for "control of poor people", the second is true as far as it goes, but that's not very
far. You're targeting mainly drug money while completely ignoring corporate and
high-net-worth individuals.
My question (to no one) is how was the automation financed? Did the ski company issue
new shares in equity with first refusal to the employees? Or did the company instead mosey
on down to a local branch of the government-privileged private credit cartel to have
themselves a heaping helping of the PUBLIC'S (including the employees') CREDIT but for the
company owners' PRIVATE GAIN?
As a partridge that hatches eggs which it has not laid,
So is a person who makes a fortune, but unjustly;
In the middle of his days it will abandon him,
And in the end he will be a fool. Jeremiah 17:11
The human population didn't grow to 8 billion through physical distancing, touchless
interaction, and living in isolation. ecommerce is a thing now, but it may not have a long
shelf life. There is an inherent need for human interaction if the specie is to prosper. The
pandemic is transitory and will eventually pass; human needs, wants, and desires will endure. I
look forward to the day when I can speak with a store clerk, browse shelves and racks, and pay
for things with currency. I don't believe that there is no going back. In fact, we must go
back. At least most of the way back.
Given that we no longer trust the intentions of most public and private institutions,
i am looking for signs of a new phenomenon, which i call "Fear of new developments in
science or technology". ...due to the belief that said developments will only be used
against us, either by the state or oligarchy. Anyone have thoughts on this?
When I read "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley I considered it an improbable fantasy. But
it certainly does seem now that something of the kind is in our future, if the "best people"
have their way. Another good treatment of the subject is the short story "Welcome to the
Monkey House" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
"Satan has returned to Earth for a sightseeing visit in the form of the American
billionaire Henry Wondergood. Accompanied by his faithful demon butler Toppi they head for
Rome, but are sidetracked by an unforeseen accident and end up at the home of the inscrutable
Thomas Magnus and his divine daughter Maria. As Satan begins to discover the meaning of being
a man, the satanic aspects of mankind become ever more apparent to him"
"...Evgeny Zamyatin who wrote the book "Us", many think that the book served as inspiration
for Orwell's 1984, for lovers of anti utopian literature it is a must read."
I've been appreciating your recommendations over the past months, Paco. Thank you. I wish
I could read/listen to them in the original language.
I noticed the other day that this book by Evgeny Zamyatin is available online for
free:
EUGENE ZAMIATIN
"WE"
Authorized Translation from the Russian
By GREGORY ZILBOORG
@1924
Paco, was your series you first mentioned an adaptation of the novel I am reading? I was
puzzled by your mention that 'Bulgakov was a physician' -- the author of 'The Master and
Margarita was not, so not to confuse James any further than I have - and James, just to
clarify, the quotation I gave is not from the novel. Here's a bit, and I'll include
psychohistorian in this conversation as well:
"But here is a question that is troubling me: if there is no God, then, one may ask,who
governs human life and, in general, the whole order of things on earth?"
"Man governs it himself," Homeless angrily hastened to reply to this admittedly
none-too-clear question.
"Pardon me," the stranger responded gently, "but in order to govern, one needs, after
all, to have a precise plan for a certain, at least somewhat decent, length of time. Allow
me to ask you, then, how can man govern, if he is not only deprived of the opportunity of
making a plan for at least some ridiculously short period--well, say, a thousand years, but
cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow?
And in fact," and here the stranger turned to Berlioz, "imagine that you, for instance,
start governing, giving orders to others and yourself, generally, so to speak, acquire a
taste for it, and suddenly you get ... hem ... hem ... lung cancer ..." - here the
foreigner smiled sweetly, as if the though of lung cancer gave him pleasure - "yes, cancer"
- narrowing his eyes like a cat, he repeated the sonorous word - "and all your governing is
over!..."
Yes indeed, we are talking about the same book and author, Mikhail Bulgakov. He was a
doctor even though he did not practice for too long. He wrote a book of short stories about a
young doctor out of university who is sent to a remote village:
He became adicted to morphine, adiction that would torture him all his life. The great
post soviet -greatest IMO- film maker Balabanov took those stories and made a film by the
name "Morfiy" of Morphine, I truly recommend you to watch it, a fantastic film that depicts
the backwardness of Russian villages during the revolution and the decadence of the
burgeoise. There is a truly electrifying scene -among many- of an iced run on a sleigh, the
doctor is pursued by a pack of wolves. The film maker took a liberty for the end of the movie
that does not appear in the book and that obviosuly is not real but closes a circle of a
fantastic story. I read both books before watching the TV serial or the movie, the serial is
really worth watching in spite of its length, but try to search for the original with
subtitles, I watched a couple of minutes of the one dubbed and it is awful, it kills the
impresive acting of Basilashvily doing Voland, and the film Morphine too, high quality stuff
both of them.
If you're interested in Bulgakov's life read about the phone call from Stalin, he asked
him if he wanted to leave the Soviet Union and Bulgakov hesitated, so he did stay unlike
another writer that just as Bulgakov wrote a letter to Stalin asking to be allowed to leave,
which he did, the other writer was Evgeny Zamyatin who wrote the book "Us", many think that
the book served as inspiration for Orwell's 1984, for lovers of anti utopian literature it is
a must read.
@ juliania and @ paco... thank you both... i was able to watch the first of a 10 part
series that i did find on youtube.. although the english subtitles are poor, one gets the
brilliant content of the philosophical discussion in episode 1.. i am thinking it might be
best for me to read the book, as opposed to watching the other 9 episodes..
here is episode 2 link if you are interested in seeing what i am watching - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG07m3-_Oxc
Mikhail Bulgakov is a fascinating character and story teller... i am still caught up in
the brothers karamazov book and don't imagine i will finish it for another good month! thank
you both for drawing my attention to him and this book The Master and Margarita.. thanks also
paco for mentioning those other books as well!
@ 211-212 migueljose / paco... i my late 20's i made a trip down to the yucatan pennisula
visiting the area - merida, progresso and the archaeological sites chitzen itza, and also
palenque which is a bit further away... i believe this is mostly all mayan culture and there
are still mayan people in these areas.. i really enjoyed my experience and believe i would
have crossed paths with some of the mayan people in this area, but i have never been to
gautemala...i think the reason these people are not highlighted as the uighurs is for geo
political purposes only... it is the way of the west... thanks for both your notes and
comments..
Thanks very much, Paco @ 212, the introductory information for the novel (which is all I
have read of Bulgakov's work) did not mention his medical profession, nor his morphine
addiction. Here is what wikipedia says about it (I know the source is not always accurate but
in this case it would seem fairly reliable):
At the outbreak of the First World War, he volunteered with the Red Cross as a medical
doctor and was sent directly to the front, where he was badly injured at least twice.
Bulgakov's suffering from these wounds had deleterious long-term effects. To suppress
chronic pain, especially in the abdomen, he injected himself with morphine. Over the next
year his addiction grew stronger. In 1918, he abandoned morphine and never used it again.
Morphine, a book released in 1926, is his account of that trying period.
His description of Pilate in the novel is most certainly as a result of his experience
with morphine; it is really a powerful rendition of character, and based upon Bulgakov's own
experiences - another motif is cowardice in the face of imperial might, certainly a factor in
his inability to release the novel and, like Pilate, his subservience to Stalin. (That is
discussed in the introduction by the translator, Pevear.)
Sorry, james @ 226, from just the first frame of that I shut it off -- no way is it what
the book is presenting, which is farcical and humorous. Bulgakov had his novel memorized --
he went over and over it to get the right effect and the shock value I think much depends on
our imaginations at full play and his actual descriptions of what is happening, not how it
would look, with musical interpretation. I think you lose that with a visual representation
-- I have watched the Russian series on TBK also, and I would say the same for that, even
though they did better than the American version, which was awful.
It's about words. Do save yourself for the words - they are exquisite, even in
translation
. And the contrast in the words between the two narrative forms used in the novel is like
Dorothy going to the land of OZ -- happening in the second chapter of the book, which
starts:
Pontius Pilate
In a white cloak with blood-red lining, with the shuffling gait of a cavalryman, early
in the morning of the fourteenth day of the month of Nisan, there came out to the covered
colonnade between the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great, the procurator of Judea,
Pontius Pilate...
It's the reader's imagination, first shocked by the earlier tone of fantasy, being now
given an epic scene, tragic as the first chapter was comic...it can't be made real except as
the words carry it forward. The novel reads like that theatrical image of the two masks of
tragedy and comedy combined - that's the only visual that works. And it's like poetry. You
can't make a film of a poem, or you shouldn't try. The words are sufficient.
This is a good, short book laying out many of the ways that the market has crept up on us and made our lives smaller.
Konczal provides necessary pushback to the neoliberal project, showing just everything that we have lost as the forces of capital
decided that the Great Society, the New Deal, and the Progressive Era were bridges too far against the corporate form. 8 people
found this helpful
Konczal's book is a compact history of how Americans have tried to remove the constraints imposed on them by the market. Konczal
questions the conventional idea that the market is solely a mechanism that expands choices and opportunity. As he shows, markets
can, and have, achieved precisely the opposite outcomes -- restricting choices and preventing people from having options. In many
instances, Americans successfully reclaimed the liberty they had lost to the market by organizing or taking state action. He thus
makes a more general case for ensuring that societal outcomes are more consistent with Berlin's notion of positive liberty. Libertarians
will not appreciate the book's conclusions.
The book starts with the Homestead Act and ends with the decision to terminate virtually free higher education in the 1960s
and 1970s. In between, he covers a lot of historical ground -- the effort to reduce working hours in the 19th century, the Wagner
Act and Social Security during the New Deal, and the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid, among other things. Despite the book's
ambitious scope, you can read it in a sitting, which is quite a feat. Either Konczal is a naturally efficient writer, or he has
a good editor.
There is one topic I would've liked to see treated in more detail -- finance. Konczal gives the best concise summary of the
economic ideas behind the ideological shift toward neoliberalism I have read. Still, the liberalization of finance during the
past 50 years and its farreaching implications receive a cursory discussion. In an interview, Konczal said he wanted to include
more discussion of this topic and something on the gold standard but didn't see how to incorporate it. In my view, it would have
fit quite naturally into the chapter "Free Economy."
But this is a quibble. Overall, the book is both well researched and well written. It sheds light on an important and timely
question -- to what extent should Americans permit themselves to be subject to market-driven outcomes? The book shows that, historically,
Americans have tried to implement changes that enabled them to live freer lives by organizing and taking political action. Not
all those changes were successful but many were.
For a deeper dive into these and related questions, read this book along with Polanyi's "The Great Transformation," Robin's
"The Reactionary Mind," and Slobodian's "The Globalists." 4 people found this helpful
Freedom from the Market remakes our understanding of American politics. By drawing intelligently on forgotten aspects of American
history, Konczal makes it easier for Americans to understand that things they might not believe are possible in America must be,
because they have been. He rescues moments such as the WWII government run daycare centers, or the use of the power of the federal
state to bring through the integration of Southern hospitals, from the enormous condescension of posterity. And notably, although
he doesn't dwell on this point, many of these changes began at moments that seem shittier and more despairing than our own.
So what Konczal is doing is neither to provide a standard linear history, nor yet a policy textbook. Instead, he is claiming
an alternative American tradition, that has not looked to the market as its apotheosis, but instead has sought to free Americans
from its random vagaries. His history explains how Americans have responded collectively to the real and expressed needs of publics,
who have organized to fight for them. And it does so in the plain language that he mentions in passing was necessary to allow
ordinary people to organize and understand who was trying to stop them.
Konczal's fundamental claim is that people who link freedom to markets miss out on much of the story. Equally important is
a notion of freedom <em>from</em> markets, "rooted in public programs that genuinely serve people and checking market dependency."
This notion goes back much further in time than the New Deal. The nineteenth century is sometimes depicted as a reign of laissez-faire,
both by those who admired it and deplored it. Konczal argues instead that there was an emerging sense of public needs - and how
the government might provide for them. For example, this helps us understand the provision of public land through the Homestead
Act and the land grant universities.
The nineteenth century notion of the public was clearly horribly flawed and contradictory - it did not include slaves or Native
Americans. Some, like Horace Greeley ended up fleeing these contradictions into the welcoming arms of free market absolutism.
But within these contradictions lay possibilities that opened up in the twentieth century. Konczal builds, for example on Eric
Schickler's work to argue that as the New Deal began to provide concrete benefits to African Americans, it created a new conduit
between them and the Democratic Party, breaking up the old coalition that had held Jim Crow together.
Konczal explains how change happens - through social movements and the state:
While the Supreme Court can be effective at holding back change and enforcing already existing power structures, it is actually
very weak at creating new reform itself. It controls no funding and is dependent on elite power structures to carry out its
decisions. What really creates change is popular mobilization and legislative changes.
He also draws on historians like Quinn Slobodian, to describe how modern Hayekians have sought to "encase" the market order
in institutions and practices that are hard to overturn. Property rights aren't the foundation of liberty, as both nineteenth
century jurists and twentieth century economists would have it. They are a product of the choices of the state, and as such intensely
political.
This allows Konczal to turn pragmatism against the Hayekians. Hayek's notion of spontaneous order is supposed to be evolutionary.
But if there is a need to to provide collective goods for people that cannot be fulfilled through voluntarism, the Hayekian logic
becomes a brutal constraint on adaptation.
The efforts of Hayekians to enforce binding legal constraints, to cripple the gathering of the collective knowledge that can
guide collective action, to wink at legal doctrines intended to subvert social protections against the market; all these prevent
the kinds of evolutionary change that are necessary to respond to changing circumstances. Konczal makes it clear that Oliver Wendell
Holmes was no left-winger - but his criticisms of the rigid and doctrinaire laissez-faire precepts of his colleagues rings true.
Their "willingness to use a very specific understanding of economics to override law writes a preferential understanding of economics
into the constitution itself." Although Konczal wrote this book before the current crisis, he describes Holmes as mentioning compulsory
vaccination laws as one of the ways in which government interference in private decisions can have general social benefits. The
wretched contortions of libertarians over the last several months, and their consequences for human welfare in states such as
North Dakota illustrate the point, quite brutally.
What Konczal presses for is a very different notion of freedom. This doesn't deny the benefits of markets, but it qualifies
them. In Konczal's words, "markets are great at distributing things based on people's willingness to pay. But there are some goods
that should be distributed by need." Accepting this point entails the necessity of keeping some important areas of life outside
the determining scope of markets. Furthermore, people's needs change over time, as societies and markets change. Konczal's framework
suggests the need for collective choice to figure out the best responses to these changes, and a vibrant democratic politics,
in which the state responds to the expressed needs of mobilized publics as the best way to carry out these choices.
All this makes the book sound more like an exercise in political theory than it is. You need to read the book itself, if you
really to get the good stuff - the stories, the examples, and the overall narrative that Konczal weaves together. <em>Freedom
from the Market</em> has the potential to be a very important book, focusing attention on the contested, messy but crucially important
intersection between social movements and the state. It provides a set of ideas that people on both sides of that divide can learn
from, and a lively alternative foundation to the deracinated technocratic notions of politics, in which good policy would somehow,
magically, be politically self supporting, that has prevailed up until quite recently. Recommended.
Despite the fact that John le Carre was to his last day was MI6 asset and continue to spread the MI6 propaganda (he was
adamantly anti-Russian and anti-Trump), he was entertaining story teller and some of his interviews are a real art.
Le Carré feuded with Salman Rushdie over The Satanic Verses , stating
that "nobody has a God-given right to insult a great religion and be published with impunity".
[35]
In January 2003, two months prior to the invasion, The Times published le Carré's essay
"The United States Has Gone Mad" criticising the buildup to the Iraq War and President George W. Bush 's
response to the 11
September 2001 terrorist attacks , calling it "worse than McCarthyism , worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term
potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War " and "beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have
hoped for in his nastiest dreams". [36][37] Le
Carré participated in the London protests against the Iraq War
. He said the war resulted from the "politicisation of intelligence to fit the political
intentions" of governments and "How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger
from bin Laden to Saddam
Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history". [38][39]
He was critical of Tony
Blair 's role in taking Britain into the Iraq War, saying "I can't understand that Blair
has an afterlife at all. It seems to me that any politician who takes his country to war under
false pretences has committed the ultimate sin. I think that a war in which we refuse to accept
the body count of those that we kill is also a war of which we should be ashamed".
[38]
Le Carré was critical of Western governments' policies towards Iran. He believed
Iran's actions are a response to being "encircled by nuclear powers" and by the way in which
"we ousted Mosaddeq through the CIA and the Secret
Service here across the way and installed the Shah and trained his ghastly secret
police force in all the black arts, the SAVAK ". [38]
In 2017, le Carré expressed concerns over the future of liberal democracy , saying "I think of
all things that were happening across Europe in the 1930s, in Spain, in Japan, obviously in
Germany. To me, these are absolutely comparable signs of the rise of fascism and it's contagious, it's infectious.
Fascism is up and running in Poland and Hungary. There's an encouragement about".
[40] He later wrote
that the end of the Cold War had left the West without a coherent ideology, in contrast to the
"notion of individual
freedom , of inclusiveness, of tolerance – all of that we called anti-communism " prevailing during that
time. [41]
... ... ...
Le Carré was an outspoken advocate of European integration and sharply
criticised Brexit .
[45] Le Carré
criticised Conservative politicians such as
Boris Johnson (whom
he referred to as a "mob orator"), Dominic Cummings , and Nigel Farage in interviews, claiming that
their "task is to fire up the people with nostalgia [and] with anger". He further opined in
interviews that "What really scares me about nostalgia is that it's become a political weapon.
Politicians are creating a nostalgia for an England that never existed, and selling it, really,
as something we could return to", noting that with "the demise of the working class we saw also the demise of an
established social order, based on the stability of ancient class structures". [44][46]
On the other
hand, he said that in the Labour Party "they have this Leninist element and they have this
huge appetite to level society."
"As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the
citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel." ~Grover Cleveland
(about that other gilded
age)
"There is fraud at the heart of Wall Street -- deliberate intellectual, business, and political deception. Charles Ferguson is in
hot pursuit.
Inside
Job
shook
up the cozy world of academic finance.
Predator
Nation
should
stir prosecutors into action. And if we fail to reform our political system, you can say goodbye to American democracy." --
Simon
Johnson
,
coauthor of
White
House Burning
and
professor at MIT Sloan School of Management
"Over the last thirty years, the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of
opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population.
Federal policy is increasingly dictated by the wealthy, by the financial sector, and by powerful (though sometimes badly mismanaged)
industries. These policies are implemented and praised by these groups' willing servants, namely the increasingly
bought-and-paid-for leadership of America's political parties, academia, and lobbying industry.
If allowed to continue, this process will turn the United States into a declining, unfair society with an impoverished, angry,
uneducated population under the control of a small, ultrawealthy elite. Such a society would be not only immoral but also
eventually unstable, dangerously ripe for religious and political extremism."
4.0 out of 5 stars
Scary
read. Frightening true! HIGHLY recommend!!
Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2017
Verified Purchase
Just finished this page turner. Wow! Talk about an enlightening read.
Scary too and worse, yet it's so spot on. I always knew that most businesses, especially those dealing with
money are crooked, selfish and good for nothing greedy souls. This book proves my point and more. Personally, I
never heard of this book or the author until my brother recommended it to me in passing. It scared the hell out
of him. Naturally, I had to see what book could do that. After reading it, I understand why.
Not only are the financial industries greedy and crooked but so is our governments and both Democrats and
Republicans. The housing crash of 2008 wasn't the beginning of our problems but the culmination of years of
greed, shady deals and lack of accountability for the financial industry. President George W. Bush was
complicit in protecting the finance industry not the people of America. Worse yet was President Barack Obama.
It's all in there: every dirty little detail. If you think your broker, banker or financial advisor has your
best interest at heart, this couldn't show how very wrong you are. Is the book perfect? No. Is the U.S.
Government or any other world government perfect? Hell no. should we be very afraid of how our bankers are?
Yes.
This is a book I enjoyed reading because I already knew about most of it already just by observing and never
trusting anyone anyway. I highly recommend it. I loved the fact that the author wasn't afraid to speak the
truth. That is always refreshing. I look forward to reading more by Charles Ferguson.
Overall, an informative and compelling read. Everyone whether interested in finances or note needs to read this
book. Seriously!
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OMG!
You owe it to yourself to read what is really going on!
5.0 out of 5 stars
OMG!
You owe it to yourself to read what is really going on!
Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2014
Verified Purchase
Definitely an eye opener. If I was cynical before, this one pushed me
over the edge. Banks and large corporations in collusion with the government and zero accountability. Our
newspapers, again, did a disservice to the public. It is one thing to talk about the mortgage industry going
under, it is quite another to understand what the banks did to facilitate a world-wide recession with NO
prosecutions. I was particularly appalled that the corporations paid the politicians who voted to remove any
restraints on the banks. Then the banks created derivative markets they knew would fail. Moreover, the bank
made millions of dollars by betting the derivative market would fail. Yet, when the bubble burst, these same
people were standing at the government door (that they paid for) with their hand out for a taxpayer bail-out.
The CEOs were rewarded for their bad behavior with millions of dollars in bonuses and no repercussions for
bilking millions of victims or for causing a world wide downward money spiral.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Long
on diagnosis, short on solution
Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2012
Verified Purchase
As a fan of "Inside Job" I was eager to read Predator Nation, which
minces no words in designating the financial industry as "criminal" abetted by the political establishment,
whether Republican or Democrat. The other reviews here lay out what this book accomplishes, to which I would
only underscore the powerful and no-holds-barred approach of Ferguson to establishing responsibility and
labeling it "criminal" as well as "predatory."
Beyond critique of Wall Street and the political "duopoly," the book widely supports the thesis that something
is terribly wrong in America, a cultural malaise rooted in economic thievery and imbalance empowering the
wealthy, and rendering today's America into the equivalent of what we used to call "a banana republic." Charles
Ferguson pulls no punches in laying out his case here.
But, as another review has pointed out, the ending is disappointing. Charles has laid into Obama as part of the
"duopoly" governing America, meaning diverging only on fractious social issues but essentially united in
matters of finance and government, including war. At one point he labels Obama's weak commentary on controlling
Wall Street "horse [manure]" and then at another point says "he [Obama] screwed us." In his concluding five
page chapter which has an "oh, well" feel to it he tells us "hold your nose and vote for him [Obama], as I
will."
With this and various commentaries we seem to be very long on laying out damages and ascribing responsibility,
but have almost nothing to say on what to do other than repair to the lounge on the Titanic and have another
whiskey, hoping somebody will come along with a bright idea or two at some point. If more energy were put into
finding answers, as with ascribing blame, maybe we could be more hopeful.
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9 people found this helpful
At 78, after a prolonged illness and without recovering consciousness, Joe Biden succumbed
to the Presidency. The last hopes of the last QAnon believers vanished like smoke in the night,
with Biden assuming the mighty US throne. This is truly a dark day for America and for the
world, as the US example will be followed by many. It is also a farewell to the real world we
were brought up in. The new world is virtual, like most of the inauguration. It is virtual and
dark, ruled by digital companies fronted by old and tired politicians.
Foreword to Brave New World, second edition -- circa 1947
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Here's my abridgement:
In the meantime, however, it seems worth while at least to mention the most serious defect in
the story, which is this. The Savage is offered only two alternatives, an insane life in
Utopia, or the life of a primitive in an Indian village, a life more human in some respects,
but in others hardly less queer and abnormal. ... Today I feel no wish to demonstrate that
sanity is impossible. ... If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer the Savage a third
alternative. Between the utopian and the primitive horns of his dilemma would lie the
possibility of sanity -- a possibility already actualized, to some extent, in a community of
exiles and refugees from the Brave New World, living within the borders of the Reservation.
In this community economics would be decentralist and Henry-Georgian , politics
Kropotkinesque cooperative. Science and technology would be used as though, like the Sabbath,
they had been made for man, not (as at present and still more so in the Brave New World) as
though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them. Religion would be the conscious and
intelligent pursuit of man's Final End, the unitive knowledge of the immanent Tao or Logos,
the transcendent Godhead or Brahman. And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of
Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the
Final End principle -- the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of
life being: "How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the
achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man's Final
End?"
.... and here is the Foreword, in full:
Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you
have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of
behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrong-doing. Rolling in the muck is
not the best way of getting clean.
Art also has its morality, and many of the rules of this morality are the same as, or at
least analogous to, the rules of ordinary ethics. Remorse, for example, is as undesirable in
relation to our bad art as it is in relation to our bad behaviour. The badness should be hunted
out, acknowledged and, if possible, avoided in the future. To pore over the literary
shortcomings of twenty years ago, to attempt to patch a faulty work into the perfection it
missed at its first execution, to spend one's middle age in trying to mend the artistic sins
committed and bequeathed by that different person who was oneself in youth -- all this is
surely vain and futile. And that is why this new Brave New World is the same as the old one.
Its defects as a work of art are considerable; but in order to correct them I should have to
rewrite the book -- and in the process of rewriting, as an older, other person, I should
probably get rid not only of some of the faults of the story, but also of such merits as it
originally possessed. And so, resisting the temptation to wallow in artistic remorse, I prefer
to leave both well and ill alone and to think about something else.
In the meantime, however, it seems worth while at least to mention the most serious defect
in the story, which is this. The Savage is offered only two alternatives, an insane life in
Utopia, or the life of a primitive in an Indian village, a life more human in some respects,
but in others hardly less queer and abnormal. At the time the book was written this idea, that
human beings are given free will in order to choose between insanity on the one hand and lunacy
on the other, was one that I found amusing and regarded as quite possibly true. For the sake,
however, of dramatic effect, the Savage is often permitted to speak more rationally than his
upbringing among the practitioners of a religion that is half fertility cult and half
Penitente ferocity would actually warrant. Even his acquaintance with Shakespeare would
not in reality justify such utterances. And at the close, of course, he is made to retreat from
sanity; his native Penitente -ism reasserts its authority and he ends in maniacal
self-torture and despairing suicide. "And so they died miserably ever after" -- much to the
reassurance of the amused, Pyrrhonic aesthete who was the author of the fable.
Today I feel no wish to demonstrate that sanity is impossible. On the contrary, though I
remain no less sadly certain than in the past that sanity is a rather rare phenomenon, I am
convinced that it can be achieved and would like to see more of it. For having said so in
several recent books and, above all, for having compiled an anthology of what the sane have
said about sanity and the means whereby it can be achieved, I have been told by an eminent
academic critic that I am a sad symptom of the failure of an intellectual class in time of
crisis. The implication being, I suppose, that the professor and his colleagues are hilarious
symptoms of success. The benefactors of humanity deserve due honour and commemoration. Let us
build a Pantheon for professors. It should be located among the ruins of one of the gutted
cities of Europe or Japan, and over the entrance to the ossuary I would inscribe, in letters
six or seven feet high, the simple words: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THE WORLD'S EDUCATORS. SI
MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS CIRCUMSPICE.
But to return to the future . . . If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer the
Savage a third alternative. Between the utopian and the primitive horns of his dilemma would
lie the possibility of sanity -- a possibility already actualized, to some extent, in a
community of exiles and refugees from the Brave New World, living within the borders of the
Reservation. In this community economics would be decentralist and Henry-Georgian,
politics Kropotkinesque cooperative. Science and technology would be used as though, like the
Sabbath, they had been made for man, not (as at present and still more so in the Brave New
World) as though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them. Religion would be the conscious
and intelligent pursuit of man's Final End, the unitive knowledge of the immanent Tao or Logos,
the transcendent Godhead or Brahman. And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of
Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the
Final End principle -- the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life
being: "How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by
me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man's Final End?"
Brought up among the primitives, the Savage (in this hypothetical new version of the book)
would not be transported to Utopia until he had had an opportunity of learning something at
first hand about the nature of a society composed of freely co-operating individuals devoted to
the pursuit of sanity. Thus altered, Brave New World would possess artistic and (if it is
permissible to use so large a word in connection with a work of fiction) a philosophical
completeness, which in its present form it evidently lacks.
But Brave New World is a book about the future and, whatever its artistic or philosophical
qualities, a book about the future can interest us only if its prophecies look as though they
might conceivably come true. From our present vantage point, fifteen years further down the
inclined plane of modern history, how plausible do its prognostications seem? What has happened
in the painful interval to confirm or invalidate the forecasts of 1931?
One vast and obvious failure of foresight is immediately apparent. Brave New World contains
no reference to nuclear fission. That it does not is actually rather odd, for the possibilities
of atomic energy had been a popular topic of conversation for years before the book was
written. My old friend, Robert Nichols, had even written a successful play about the subject,
and I recall that I myself had casually mentioned it in a novel published in the late twenties.
So it seems, as I say, very odd that the rockets and helicopters of the seventh century of Our
Ford should not have been powered by disintegrating nuclei. The oversight may not be excusable;
but at least it can be easily explained. The theme of Brave New World is not the advancement of
science as such; it is the advancement of science as it affects human individuals. The triumphs
of physics, chemistry and engineering are tacitly taken for granted. The only scientific
advances to be specifically described are those involving the application to human beings of
the results of future research in biology, physiology and psychology. It is only by means of
the sciences of life that the quality of life can be radically changed. The sciences of matter
can be applied in such a way that they will destroy life or make the living of it impossibly
complex and uncomfortable; but, unless used as instruments by the biologists and psychologists,
they can do nothing to modify the natural forms and expressions of life itself. The release of
atomic energy marks a great revolution in human history, but not (unless we blow ourselves to
bits and so put an end to history) the final and most searching revolution.
This really revolutionary revolution is to be achieved, not in the external world, but in
the souls and flesh of human beings. Living as he did in a revolutionary period, the Marquis de
Sade very naturally made use of this theory of revolutions in order to rationalize his peculiar
brand of insanity. Robespierre had achieved the most superficial kind of revolution, the
political. Going a little deeper, Babeuf had attempted the economic revolution. Sade regarded
himself as the apostle of the truly revolutionary revolution, beyond mere politics and
economics -- the revolution in individual men, women and children, whose bodies were
henceforward to become the common sexual property of all and whose minds were to be purged of
all the natural decencies, all the laboriously acquired inhibitions of traditional
civilization. Between sadism and the really revolutionary revolution there is, of course, no
necessary or inevitable connection. Sade was a lunatic and the more or less conscious goal of
his revolution was universal chaos and destruction. The people who govern the Brave New World
may not be sane (in what may be called the absolute sense of the word); but they are not
madmen, and their aim is not anarchy but social stability. It is in order to achieve stability
that they carry out, by scientific means, the ultimate, personal, really revolutionary
revolution. But meanwhile we are in the first phase of what is perhaps the penultimate
revolution. Its next phase may be atomic warfare, in which case we do not have to bother with
prophecies about the future. But it is conceivable that we may have enough sense, if not to
stop fighting altogether, at least to behave as rationally as did our eighteenth-century
ancestors. The unimaginable horrors of the Thirty Years War actually taught men a lesson, and
for more than a hundred years the politicians and generals of Europe consciously resisted the
temptation to use their military resources to the limits of destructiveness or (in the majority
of conflicts) to go on fighting until the enemy was totally annihilated. They were aggressors,
of course, greedy for profit and glory; but they were also conservatives, determined at all
costs to keep their world intact, as a going concern. For the last thirty years there have been
no conservatives; there have been only nationalistic radicals of the right and nationalistic
radicals of the left. The last conservative statesman was the fifth Marquess of Lansdowne; and
when he wrote a letter to the the Times , suggesting that the First World War should be
concluded with a compromise, as most of the wars of the eighteenth century had been, the editor
of that once conservative journal refused to print it. The nationalistic radicals had their
way, with the consequences that we all know --Bolshevism, Fascism, inflation, depression,
Hitler, the Second World War, the ruin of Europe and all but universal famine.
Assuming, then, that we are capable of learning as much from Hiroshima as our forefathers
learned from Magdeburg, we may look forward to a period, not indeed of peace, but of limited
and only partially ruinous warfare. During that period it may be assumed that nuclear energy
will be harnessed to industrial uses. The result, pretty obviously, will be a series of
economic and social changes unprecedented in rapidity and completeness. All the existing
patterns of human life will be disrupted and new patterns will have to be improvised to conform
with the nonhuman fact of atomic power. Procrustes in modern dress, the nuclear scientist will
prepare the bed on which mankind must lie; and if mankind doesn't fit -- well, that will be
just too bad for mankind. There will have to be some stretching and a bit of amputation -- the
same sort of stretching and amputations as have been going on ever since applied science really
got into its stride, only this time they will be a good deal more drastic than in the past.
These far from painless operations will be directed by highly centralized totalitarian
governments. Inevitably so; for the immediate future is likely to resemble the immediate past,
and in the immediate past rapid technological changes, taking place in a mass-producing economy
and among a population predominantly propertyless, have always tended to produce economic and
social confusion. To deal with confusion, power has been centralized and government control
increased. It is probable that all the world's governments will be more or less completely
totalitarian even before the harnessing of atomic energy; that they will be totalitarian during
and after the harnessing seems almost certain. Only a large-scale popular movement toward
decentralization and self-help can arrest the present tendency toward statism. At present there
is no sign that such a movement will take place.
There is, of course, no reason why the new totalitarianisms should resemble the old.
Government by clubs and firing squads, by artificial famine, mass imprisonment and mass
deportation, is not merely inhumane (nobody cares much about that nowadays), it is demonstrably
inefficient and in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy
Ghost. A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive
of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have
to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in
present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, news- paper editors and
schoolteachers. But their methods are still crude and unscientific. The old Jesuits' boast
that, if they were given the schooling of the child, they could answer for the man's religious
opinions, was a product of wishful thinking. And the modern pedagogue is probably rather less
efficient at conditioning his pupils' reflexes than were the reverend fathers who educated
Voltaire. The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something,
but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of
view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects, by lowering what Mr.
Churchill calls an "iron curtain" between the masses and such facts or arguments as the local
political bosses regard as undesirable, totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much
more effectively than they could have done by the most eloquent denunciations, the most
compelling of logical rebuttals. But silence is not enough. If persecution, liquidation and the
other symptoms of social friction are to be avoided, the positive sides of propaganda must be
made as effective as the negative. The most important Manhattan Projects of the future will be
vast government-sponsored enquiries into what the politicians and the participating scientists
will call "the problem of happiness" -- in other words, the problem of making people love their
servitude. Without economic security, the love of servitude cannot possibly come into
existence; for the sake of brevity, I assume that the all-powerful executive and its managers
will succeed in solving the problem of permanent security. But security tends very quickly to
be taken for granted. Its achievement is merely a superficial, external revolution. The love of
servitude cannot be established except as the result of a deep, personal revolution in human
minds and bodies. To bring about that revolution we require, among others, the following
discoveries and inventions.
First, a greatly improved technique of suggestion -- through infant conditioning and,
later, with the aid of drugs, such as scopolamine.
Second, a fully developed science of human differences, enabling government managers to
assign any given individual to his or her proper place in the social and economic hierarchy.
(Round pegs in square holes tend to have dangerous thoughts about the social system and to
infect others with their discontents.)
Third (since reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of
taking pretty frequent holidays), a substitute for alcohol and the other narcotics, something
at once less harmful and more pleasure-giving than gin or heroin.
And fourth (but this would be a long-term project, which it would take generations of
totalitarian control to bring to a successful conclusion), a foolproof system of eugenics,
designed to standardize the human product and so to facilitate the task of the managers. In
Brave New World this standardization of the human product has been pushed to
fantastic, though not perhaps impossible, extremes. Technically and ideologically we are
still a long way from bottled babies and Bokanovsky groups of semi-morons. But by A.F. 600,
who knows what may not be happening? Meanwhile the other characteristic features of that
happier and more stable world -- the equivalents of soma and hypnopaedia and the scientific
caste system --are probably not more than three or four generations away. Nor does the sexual
promiscuity of Brave New World seem so very distant. There are already certain American
cities in which the number of divorces is equal to the number of marriages. In a few years,
no doubt, marriage licenses will be sold like dog licenses, good for a period of twelve
months, with no law against changing dogs or keeping more than one animal at a time. As
political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase.
And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or
conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the
freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to
reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.
All things considered it looks as though Utopia were far closer to us than anyone, only
fifteen years ago, could have imagined. Then, I projected it six hundred years into the future.
Today it seems quite possible that the horror may be upon us within a single century. That is,
if we refrain from blowing ourselves to smithereens in the interval. Indeed, unless we choose
to decentralize and to use applied science, not as the end to which human beings are to be made
the means, but as the means to producing a race of free individuals, we have only two
alternatives to choose from: either a number of national, militarized totalitarianisms, having
as their root the terror of the atomic bomb and as their consequence the destruction of
civilization (or, if the warfare is limited, the perpetuation of militarism); or else one
supranational totalitarianism, called into existence by the social chaos resulting from rapid
technological progress in general and the atomic revolution in particular, and developing,
under the need for efficiency and stability, into the welfare-tyranny of Utopia. You pays your
money and you takes your choice.
In the foreword to the 1946 edition of his novel, Brave New World , Aldous Huxley anticipated the
continued emergence, perhaps in novel forms, of statist totalitarianism:
There is, of course, no reason why the new totalitarianisms should resemble the old.
Government by clubs and firing squads, by artificial famine, mass imprisonment and mass
deportation, is not merely inhumane (nobody cares much about that nowadays), it is
demonstrably inefficient and in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin
against the Holy Ghost. A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the
all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of
slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it
is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda,
news-paper editors and schoolteachers. But their methods are still crude and
unscientific.
Because, in 1946, the world had yet to witness the horrors of Red China, North Korea, Cuba,
and Cambodia, Huxley guessed wrong that artificial famines, mass imprisonment, and political
executions would go out of fashion. Totalitarianism is impossible without brute violence. And,
from our brave new world of 2021, where Big Tech's promiscuous deployment of tools like
Machine
Learning Fairness and
shadow banning prevent users' exposure to wrongthink, his estimation of propaganda methods
as "crude and unscientific" is badly out of date.
But how chilling is Huxley's prescience about propaganda ministers, news editors, and
schoolteachers training generations of serfs to willingly obey "political bosses and their army
of managers"?
Just like the truism that "generals always fight the last war," Huxley's point that there's
"no reason why the new totalitarianisms should resemble the old" calls for both vigilance and
imagination on our part; our next totalitarian enemy isn't limited to patterns of
twentieth-century Nazism or Soviet-style Communism.
For instance, the suffocating blanket of censorship and suppression of free speech, which
seems to defy any constitutional remedy because it's not directly traceable to
government action, remains a problem without an obvious solution. Regardless, it's an open
secret that the corporate executives in media, Big Tech, and Hollywood managing this
suppression are acting on behalf of a single political party -- a party that, due in large part
to that interference and suppression now have near total control of the federal government.
Townhall's Matt Vespa quotes even a liberal reporter, Michael Tracey, warning that the
"absolute authoritarian lunacy" of Twitter's decision to ban President Trump isn't about
"'safety,' it's about purposely inflating a threat in order to assert political and cultural
dominance." Warns Tracey, "The new corporate authoritarian liberal-left monoculture is going to
be absolutely ruthless -- and in 12 days it is merging with the state ." [My
italics].
Glenn Greenwald, another committed progressive, also complains "
that political censorship has 'contaminated virtually every mainstream centre-left
political organization, academic institution and newsroom.'" In October, Greenwald, co-founder
of The Intercept news site,
resigned after they refused to publish his article
about Joe Biden and Hunter's shocking influence-peddling, unless Greenwald first removed
"critical points against the Democratic candidate."
In
reality, standing alone with election fraud notwithstanding , last October's lockstep
decision by an entire news industry to suppress the starkly headline-worthy scandals around
Hunter Biden's laptop, along with all other negative stories about Joe Biden, accounts directly
for 17% of Biden voters who would have abandoned him "
had they known the facts about one or more of these news stories." Because those lost votes
"would have changed the outcome in all six of the swing states won by Joe Biden," re-electing
Trump, burying those stories was first-degree election interference.
Huxley foresaw this, too:
The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by
refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is
silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects, by lowering what Mr.
Churchill calls an "iron curtain" between the masses and such facts or arguments as the local
political bosses regard as undesirable, totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion
much more effectively than they could have done by the most eloquent denunciations, the most
compelling of logical rebuttals.
In 2020 alone, news outlets systematically misinformed, or kept uninformed, scores of
millions of voters whose only news sources are either mainstream media or the occasional
de-contextualized sound bite. Corporate news, in addition to disappearing the Hunter Biden
story:
Misreported that opportunistic politicians imposing destructive, arbitrary lockdowns to
stop the spread of the Wuhan virus were only "following the science," while disregarding all
scientific studies showing how lockdowns were ineffective, detrimental, and even deadly;
Misreported for months that Black Lives Matter/Antifa's nightly demonstrations were
"mostly peaceful," while refusing to report on hundreds of BLM and Antifa-organized protests
involving widespread arson, looting, and violence against police and innocent civilians;
Perpetuated the dangerous myth that black men are casually shot down by white police
every day, while ignoring that "statistics "
flatly debunk the false narratives about 'racist white cops' and the 'hunt for unarmed
black men'";
Parroted the Democrat talking point that Trump's allegations of election fraud were made
"without any evidence," while obstinately refusing to investigate well-documented evidence of
pervasive election irregularities in battleground states.
But Fake News is only as powerful as its consumers are gullible. Knowing that, PJMedia's
Stephen Kruiser was able to predict in advance that a Biden win would be "the complete triumph
of decades of
public education indoctrination ," which is no longer education, anyway, but "more of a
leftist catechism class." Journalist
William Haupt III reports that 12 years of Common Core "has resulted in 51 percent of our
youth preferring socialism to democracy." It's also why "[t]wo thirds of the millennials
believe America is a racist and sexist country and 40 percent agree America is 'the most
unequal society in the world.'" In fact, in 2011 Chuck
Rogér traced this decline to the sixties, when teachers' colleges began churning out
"[s]ocial justice-indoctrinated teachers [who] instill resentment in 'non-dominant' (minority)
children and guilt in 'dominant' (white) children. Judging by the abundance of guilt-ridden
white Americans, the tactic is working its magic well." At present a reported
3,500 classrooms across fifty states are incorporating the New York Times ' specious
1619 Project , which teaches that every accomplishment in America's history came out
of slavery . The purpose of this all this falsified history? Not education, but more
generations of Americans "unable to discern
fact from fiction ."
Now that progressives have complete control of Washington, they'll escalate their lies -- of
commission, and especially of omission -- to gain a tighter and more permanent grip. Still,
Truth remains their real enemy. It explains social media's current blitz of de-platforming
conservatives, trying to drop an "iron curtain," just as Huxley predicted, to separate the
people from undesirable facts.
Likewise, fidelity to truth is our best defense; that, and continuing to refuse their lies.
That's one positive action Solzhenitsyn was able to offer his comrades who felt
powerless against the repressive Soviet system, "the most perceptible of its aspects" being
lies: "Personal non-participation in lies. Though lies conceal everything, though lies embrace
everything, but not with any help from me."
T.R. Clancy looks at the world from Dearborn, Michigan. You can email him at [email protected] .
In today's climate of political correctness and economic uncertainty, ad revenue only goes
so far to keep an independent voice like AmericanThinker.com going. If you enjoy our articles,
please consider supporting us with a direct contribution of as much or as little as you can
give. Your donation will ensure that we continue to bring great pieces from our outstanding
columnists.
The rich understand that capitalism is a game of musical chairs. It's systemic class warfare
conducted on a grand scale to discourage solidarity across lines that might otherwise threaten
the system, and with each market re-set arranged by the Federal Reserve, more of the country's
resources fall into wealthy hands.
Examining what happens when a society favors old money over new and breaks all the rules to
make the world safe for finance, author Jeanne Haskin predicts increasing volatility and
violence in the United States if we do not significantly change course.
For a preview of what lies ahead for the U.S., the author takes us for a quick exemplary
trip through Central America.
A society that is reared on competition will face unsettling
challenges to authority if it doesn't set certain functions outside the arena of battle, via
systematic enrichment of the affluent minority that has always had the power to topple and ruin
the system.
Today's preoccupation with America's revolutionary history is not just a piece of theater.
At the heart of America's outrage is an inability to lash out and demand redemption from the
source of its distress because the pain is inflicted, not by hatred, but by the fundamental
lack of stability built into our way of life.
Now that a fifth of the population is suffering job loss, foreclosures, or exclusion from
employment due to prejudice, poor credit, a lack of skills or education, a glut of competition
and insufficient opportunity, the failure to provide for the helpless majority means the system
is at an impasse. Because the system can't or won't perform, the Tea Party's rise was
preemptive with all its implied violence and 'real' American theater as the means to channel
our anger into voting out Obama so reform can proceed unimpeded...with all its inherent
dangers.
After reviewing some foreign examples that erupted in the environments of colonialism and
post-colonialism, neoliberalism, militarism and oligarchies, the author filters through the
head-spinning social and political noise that stands in for responsible debate in America
today. Ms. Haskin's richly documented essay sees a bonfire prepared as social tensions are
increased and inter-group pressures are encouraged to mount. So much for "One nation..."
Title Pagev
Table of Contentsxi
Introduction1
Chapter One- Unearthing the Bones7
Chapter Two- Instilling the Illusion of Choice19
Chapter Three- Political Strategizing23
Chapter Four- Behavioral Economics27
Chapter Five- Favoring Old Money over New33
Chapter Six- Making the World Safe for Finance39
Chapter Seven- The Colonial History of Belize51
Chapter Eight- Belize -- Party Politics and Debt65
Chapter Nine- Belize -- Recommendations of the IMF83
Chapter Ten- Nicaragua 1522–193991
Chapter Eleven- Nicaragua -- The Somoza Dynasty107
Chapter Twelve- Nicaragua -- Opposition to the Sandinistas119
Chapter Thirteen- Nicaragua -- Implementing Neoliberalism133
Chapter Fourteen- El Salvador -- The Military and the Oligarchy151
Chapter Fifteen- El Salvador -- The War and Its Aftermath165
Chapter Sixteen- Honduras -- Land of Instability179
Chapter Seventeen- Honduras -- The Impact of the Contras191
Chapter Eighteen- Fast-Forward to a Volatile USA205
Bibliography227
Index25
It's hilarious hearing democrats say "no-one is above the law" as they cheat the system becoming multi millionaires via
insider trading and selling their influence.
Over these last few weeks Tucker has been one of the few people to stand up to the mob and refuses to give in. Tremendous
respect for people who refuse to give up their dignity.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mosquitoes,
Fever, and America
Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2009
Verified Purchase
Over three generations ago Hans Zinsser wrote "Rats, Lice and History" telling the
story of lice and men (sorry) and the typhus Rickettsia.
He founded the literary genre marked by the examination of disease, history, and having tripartite titles; Recent
examples: Guns, Germs, and Steel; Viruses, Plagues, and History.
Though Ms. Crosby did not call her book "Mosquitoes, Fever, and America," "The American Plague" nicely continues the
tradition of this fascinating venue.
The subtitle (why must books so often have subtitles now?) claims this to be "The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, The
Epidemic That Shaped Our History", which is more than a bit of a reach - Especially, given the existence of the very
similarly themed and titled adolescent's book "An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever
Epidemic of 1793" (2003) by Jim Murphy (which, whatever your age, is also worth reading).
It is arguable that the subtitle means only to refer to the Memphis outbreak, but that single event did not "shape our
history," it was the repeated outbreaks of Yellow Jack beginning with those in the northeast ports in 1699 that truly
did change the history of all of North America. The subtitle is simply annoying marketing hyperbole - though such an
unfounded, untrue, claim did nearly make me put the book back on the shelf unopened. Which would have been a shame, as I
enjoyed the book greatly.
"(The) American Plague" details the impact of an outbreak of Yellow Fever (YF) in Memphis, Tennessee (the author's home)
in the year 1878, and follows with an in-depth examination of the subsequent discovery of the means of transmission,
prevention, vaccination, cause, and sad lack of cure for the disease.
This book also traces the origin of the disease, and reviews how it likely came to the Americas from its home in Africa
as a consequence of the slave trade. The occurrence of YF epidemics in Europe (perhaps even dating back to the mid
500's) is not discussed, which is forgivable given the focus of the book, though the fact that 300,000 people perished
from YF in Spain in the 1800's makes it clear that YF was (is) a scourge far beyond America's shores.
The author brings to life the horror and uncertainly of epidemic disease at the dawn of scientific medicine. She
recounts the difficulty of seeing the true nature of a disease though the conflicting overlay of current knowledge and
cultural belief (a current example: autism).
Further, she points to the mendacity of businessmen who may have, in their efforts to prevent disruption of commerce by
quarantine, allowed this outbreak to spread from New Orleans to Memphis in the first place. She briefly touches on the
ethics of human, of animal, and of self, experimentation. It is not a simple book, though it is clearly, if at times
unevenly, written.
Unlike most popular science books, she includes an extensive source bibliography that points to precisely where her
material has come from. This is a very welcome addition. Over all, this is a solidly written, well researched and
interesting book. I strongly recommend it.
I also strongly recommend that you consider that the World Health Organization estimates that YF still kills 30,000
people a year. Most of these deaths could be prevented by vaccination and by mosquito control. Over the past few years
Yellow Jack has been re-emerging and spreading in the western hemisphere. This spread is, as Ms. Crosby shows that to a
degree the Memphis epidemic was, a political failure marked by primacy of business interests and of underfunded and
inadequate public health measures.
The toxicity that Matt writes about isn't just due to Trump - it's due to the left
abandoning traditional liberal values in favor of political correctness and identity
politics. This new Red Guard of ideological purity is the natural - shocking - evolution of
that....
1984 -- The writer of Truth rewrites history to fit whatever they want. Read the book.
That's the news media today. A warning leftists: Stalin and Hitler controlled the media. It's
not TRUMP controlling the media. Or ignoring the truth. And it should scare the hell out of
every American.
Crazy times indeed. It is reminiscent of the Hollywood Terror. A tipping point will come
when enough people are sickened of their arbitrary and capricious cultural fascism.
Mr. Taibbi fires a warning shot to alert us that the "instinct (in the American media)
to shield audiences from views or facts deemed politically uncomfortable has been in
evidence since Trump became a national phenomenon." I would say not "since" -- that vile
instinct has merely been more in evidence. The media's fear and hatred for diversity of
opinion, for the freedom of speech, has doubtless worsened ...
This is looking like another 1960's type insurrection that will end up the same way: it will
be used by the rich and powerful elites (notice how the corporate controlled media has gone
on one knee for BLM and has gone outright anti-white?), there will be a back lash that will
crush it (right after the election), and its leaders will be either absorbed into the
establishment or offed.
America looks like a hybrid of Stephen King, Brave New World, and 1984 and the rich and
powerful US elites and intel agencies stroke it and love it. Notice that the US super rich
have been raking it in since January 2020? While at the same time Trump is busy making the US
a vassal state of Israel and accelerating the roll-out of Cold War v2 which is just fine with
US elites that will not change with the election of moron Biden (if the people elect Biden
they are electing his VP as Biden will not last long; he is a lot like Yeltsin that was
pumped up on mental stimulants and nutriments to perform for short periods until the next
treatment).
"... This is where Orwell enters the convergence , for the State masks its stripmining and power grab with deliciously Orwellian misdirections such as "the People's Party," "democratic socialism," and so on. ..."
"... Orwell understood the State's ontological imperative is expansion, to the point where it controls every level of community, markets and society. Once the State escapes the control of the citizenry, it is free to exploit them in a parasitic predation that is the mirror-image of Monopoly capital. For what is the State but a monopoly of force, coercion, data manipulation and the regulation of private monopolies? ..."
"... Aldous Huxley foresaw a Central State that persuaded its people to "love their servitude" via propaganda, drugs, entertainment and information-overload. In his view, the energy required to force compliance exceeded the "cost" of persuasion, and thus the Powers That Be would opt for the power of suggestion. ..."
"... "My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World . ..."
"... As Marx explained, the dynamics of state-monopoly-capitalism lead to the complete dominance of capital over labor in both financial and political "markets," as wealth buys political influence which then protects and enforces capital's dominance. ..."
The global crisis is not merely economic; it is the result of profound financial,
sociological and political trends described by Marx, Kafka, Orwell and Huxley.
The unfolding global crisis is best understood as the convergence of the dynamics described
by Marx, Kafka, Orwell and Huxley. Let's start with Franz Kafka , the writer (1883-1924) who most
eloquently captured the systemic injustices of all-powerful bureaucratic institutions--the
alienation experienced by the hapless citizen enmeshed in the bureaucratic web, petty
officialdom's mindless persecutions of the innocent, and the intrinsic absurdity of the
centralized State best expressed in this phrase: "We expect errors, not justice."
If this isn't the most insightful summary of the current moment in history, then what is? A
lawyer by training and practice, Kafka understood that the the more powerful and entrenched the
institution and its bureaucracy, the greater the collateral damage rained on the innocent, and
the more extreme the perversion of justice.
We are living in a Kafkaesque nightmare where suspicion alone justifies the government stealing from its citizens, and an
unrelated crime (possessing drug paraphernalia) is used to justify state theft.
As in a Kafkaesque nightmare, the state is above the law when it needs an excuse to steal your car or cash. There is no
crime, no arrest, no due process--just the state threatening that you should shut up and be happy they don't take everything you
own.
All these forms of civil forfeiture are well documented. While some would claim the worst
abuses have been rectified, that is far from evident. What is evident is how long these kinds
of legalized looting have been going on.
When the state steals our cash or car on mere suspicion, you have no recourse other than
horrendously costly and time-consuming legal actions. So you no longer have enough money to
prove your innocence now that we've declared your car and cash guilty?
Tough luck, bucko--be glad you live in a fake democracy with a fake rule of law, a fake
judiciary, and a government with the officially sanctioned right to steal your money and
possessions without any due process or court proceedings-- legalized looting .
They don't have to torture a confession out of you, like the NKVD/KGB did in the former
Soviet Union, because your cash and car are already guilty.
This is where Orwell enters the convergence , for the State masks its stripmining and power
grab with deliciously Orwellian misdirections such as "the People's Party," "democratic
socialism," and so on.
Orwell understood the State's ontological imperative is expansion, to the point where it
controls every level of community, markets and society. Once the State escapes the control of
the citizenry, it is free to exploit them in a parasitic predation that is the mirror-image of
Monopoly capital. For what is the State but a monopoly of force, coercion, data manipulation
and the regulation of private monopolies?
What is the EU bureaucracy in Brussels but the perfection of a stateless State?
As Kafka divined, centralized bureaucracy has the capacity for both Orwellian obfuscation
(anyone read those 1,300-page Congressional bills other than those gaming the system for their
private benefit?) and systemic avarice and injustice.
The convergence boils down to this: it would be impossible to loot this much wealth if the
State didn't exist to enforce the "rules" of parasitic predation.
Aldous Huxley foresaw a Central State that persuaded its people to "love their servitude"
via propaganda, drugs, entertainment and information-overload. In his view, the energy required
to force compliance exceeded the "cost" of persuasion, and thus the Powers That Be would opt
for the power of suggestion.
"My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of
governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I
described in Brave New World .
Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant
conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs
and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting
people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience."
As prescient as he was, Huxley could not have foreseen the power of mobile telephony, gaming
and social media hypnosis/addiction as a conditioning mechanism for passivity and
self-absorption. We are only beginning to understand the immense addictive/conditioning powers
of 24/7 mobile telephony / social media.
What would we say about a drug that caused people to forego sex to check their Facebook
page? What would we say about a drug that caused young men to stay glued to a computer for 40+
hours straight, an obsession so acute that some actually die? We would declare that drug to be
far too powerful and dangerous to be widely available, yet mobile telephony, gaming and social
media is now ubiquitous.
... ... ...
Last but not least, we come to Marx. As Marx explained, the dynamics of
state-monopoly-capitalism lead to the complete dominance of capital over labor in both
financial and political "markets," as wealth buys political influence which then protects and
enforces capital's dominance.
Marx also saw that finance-capital would inevitably incentivize over-capacity, stripping
industrial capital of pricing power and profits. Once there's more goods and services than
labor can afford to buy with earnings, financialization arises to provide credit to labor to
buy capital's surplus production and engineer financial gains with leveraged speculation and
asset bubbles.
But since labor's earnings are stagnant or declining, there's an end-game to
financialization. Capital can no longer generate any gain at all except by central banks
agreeing to buy capital's absurdly over-valued assets. Though the players tell themselves this
arrangement is temporary, the dynamics Marx described are fundamental and inexorable: the
insanity of central banks creating currency out of thin air to buy insanely over-priced assets
is the final crisis of late-stage capitalism because there is no other escape from
collapse.
Having stripped labor of earnings and political power and extracted every last scrap of
profit from over-capacity (i.e. globalization) and financialization, capital is now completely
dependent on money-spewing central banks buying their phantom capital with newly printed
currency, a dynamic that will eventually trigger a collapse in the purchasing power of the
central banks' phantom capital (i.e. fiat currencies).
When there is no incentive to invest in real-world productive assets and every incentive to
skim profits by front-running the Federal Reserve, capitalism is dead. Paraphrasing
Wallerstein, "Capitalism is no longer attractive to capitalists."
We can see this for ourselves in the real world: if "renewable energy" was as profitable as
some maintain, private capital would have rushed in to fund every project to maximize their
gains from this new source of immense profits. But as Art Berman explained in Why the
Renewable Rocket Has Failed To Launch , this hasn't been the case. Rather, "green energy"
remains dependent on government subsidies in one form or another. If hydropower is removed from
"renewables," all other renewables (solar, wind, etc.) provide only 4% of total global energy
consumption.
Japan's stagnation exemplifies Marx's analysis: Japan's central bank has created trillions
of yen out of thin air for 30 years and used this phantom capital to buy the over-valued assets
of Japan's politically dominant state-capitalist class, a policy that has led to secular
stagnation and social decline. If it weren't for China's one-off expansion, Japan's economy
would have slipped into phantom capital oblivion decades ago.
Kafka, Orwell, Huxley and Marx called it, and we're living in the last-gasp stage of the
cruel and unsustainable system they described. So sorry, but investing your phantom capital in
FANG stocks, Tik-Tok and virtual-reality games will not save phantom capital from well-deserved
oblivion.
The wristband and microchip sound fab for children under 18 so we monitor to ensure their
safety, especially in educational settings and on school trips. It would enable them to be
located if lost or snatched. If it can be used to monitor language and aspects of behaviour
then they could not be falsely accused of of antisocial actions. If they don't comply then
child care benefits or access to higher education could be withdrawn as a sanction. It may
even improve road safety if they drive illegally or badly. Any chance of a tiny electric
shock feature to the microchip?
If you thought you knew everything about Eric Blair/George Orwell, I suggest
reading this essay as a test. Hopefully, you'll discover many facets not known before as
I did.
Orwell's career was a lot more complicated than that. Basically, he came from a relatively
prosperous middle-class family, which allowed him to play the game of the writer, when it
worked, and to come back to the family when things were thin. Of course he exploited his own
experiences, as every writer does. That doesn't detract from the great creations. Animal Farm
and 1984 don't have direct origins.
Posted by: Laguerre | May 20 2020 21:39 utc |
32 @Posted by: karlof1 | May 20 2020 18:51 utc | 26
That essay is a real shame, an impossible intend of whitewashing and redime Orwell, just
another intent on rewritting of history, and try to paint what is black as white.
Neo-language
This intent could be inscribed along the rescues of Stepan Bandera and the Forest Brothers as
new heroes of NATO world in their offensive against reviving socialist ideas.
That Orwell did not change even a bit after returning from Burma is proven by the fact
that he came to Spain, and strolled around there with the Trotskyites of POUM, to elaborate
black lists of communists which then were provided to Franco, at result of which many people
was tortured and summarily executed. He, this way, contributed greatly to decimate the
resistance in the side of the legitimate republican government, and thus, to help the
fascists in their way to power, well supported by the US with arms and fuel and by the air
forces of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
Orwell: Sneak sighting of British secret services in the Cold War (is declassified by MI-5
and documented). Its function: to expose communists. He even betrayed Charles Chaplin,
exiled in his native England for FBI persecution. "Referrer". "Always loyal"
@Posted by: H.Schmatz | May 20 2020 21:40 utc | 33
In the essay by Alert Escusa linked above, it is studied the historical context in which
Orwell published his most famous works, at all innocent, debunking the legend on that he was
kinda an outsider and was about to self-publish Animal Farm , being the checked
reality that he had full support of the birgueoisie to publish his influential works when the
time was more propice for the capitalists.
As a sample, a button:
What was happening that year of 1943, while Orwell was writing his Animal Farm? It was not
exactly, as Pepe Gutiérrez says "the distribution of the world", but something quite
different that he hides from us: the Nazis had invaded the USSR two years ago,
exterminating millions of Russians and devastating much of the country. The greatest battle
of the war, Stalingrad, had taken place, and it was not yet known who would win the
conflict, whether Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. No one could safely predict that Nazism
would be extirpated from Europe, the Nazi death camps had not yet been discovered, but
Orwell was obsessed with his anti-Soviet writings. What did Orwell want to portray with his
Farm Rebellion? Nothing more and nothing less than the following: "The specific purpose
Orwell threw into it with a sense of urgency was the desire to exploit the "myth" of the
Soviet Union, as a paradigm of the socialist state".
There are plenty of comments about it. It is only worth reflecting on who benefited from
Orwell's position in 1943. The victory was precisely achieved by the Soviet people and the
Red Army at the price of innumerable human sacrifices, also easily forgotten in the West,
where the true character of the anti-fascist war is hidden. It is logical that the USSR,
which had suffered a war of extermination unprecedented in history, and which also defeated
the collaborationist and fascist regimes of Eastern Europe, along with the popular and
communist guerrillas, was seen as a liberating power by broad sectors of local populations.
In addition, the communist guerrillas, ideologically linked to the USSR, had come to have
great prestige throughout Europe: so much so that, in the first French general elections
after Nazism, the French Communist Party was the most voted party, achieving more out of 5
million votes representing 30% of the electorate [7]. As we will see later, the USSR had
very well-founded reasons to believe that a new war was being prepared against him, this
time with the country devastated, so it was logical and legitimate that he try to win
allies against the possibility of a new world war. This is a long way from "distribution of
the world" and trying to equate imperialism with socialism, as will be seen later.
I must say the replies to my 26 go in many directions. As to Martin Sieff's essay, it's
fundamentally a well deserved critique of the BBC that segues into a discussion about how
George Orwell would easily recognize its Fake News for what it is that draws on Finding George
Orwell in Burma for some of its content. (A very short preview's available at the
link and it can be borrowed if you're an Archive member, for which there's no excuse as it's
free.) IMO, the comments fit Sieff's intent quite well. Judging from book excerpts offered here , the book's more
a critique of Myanmar than Orwell, although the additional sources provided at page bottom
leads to credibility questions. I also note that most websites promoting Finding lead
with the NY Times jacket blurb which is more about dissing Myanmar than revealing what
was found regarding Orwell. Sieff says he knows the author but doesn't speculate on why he
chose a female nom de plume; I too wonder why as I don't see what purpose it could serve
unless it's anti-Myanmar propaganda that Orwell would recognize or something similar.
Curious--an innocuous comment becomes a can of worms. Also curious how Orwell and his
writing still generate an intense level of controversy.
karlof1 , May 20 2020 22:47 utc |
42H.Schmatz , May 20 2020 22:52 utc |
43
@Posted by: H.Schmatz | May 20 2020 22:08 utc | 36
A bit more from the must read essay linked, even related to current events...
2. THE HISTORICAL ENVIRONMENT OF "ANIMAL FARM" AND "1984"
What events were taking place in the western world at that time, which caused a
favorable change of attitude towards Orwell's publications, of those who were previously
reticent? Neither more nor less than the imminent offensive against socialism, which had
already lost almost thirty million lives during the anti-fascist war and had suffered
appalling material destruction.
While the first copies of Animal Farm were being printed and bound, some
extremely disturbing events were taking place. Just at the end of the war, Nazi spies and
war criminals were being recycled by the American spy services, such as the German SS
General Reinhard Genhlen, whose spy network passed entirely to the Americans and was used
in Eastern Europe to promote the anti-Soviet uprisings in East Berlin in 1953 and Hungary
in 1956. Clandestine networks were created to evade thousands of Nazi criminals towards
Latin America and the USA. Later, with Japan defeated, the operation was repeated with the
Japanese scientists who are experts in bacteriological weapons, responsible for the deaths
of tens of thousands of allied prisoners, but who were secretly brought to the United
States. Meanwhile, during the 1945 Potsdam conference, which brought together Hitler's
victorious allies - where the alleged "honeymoon" took place to "divide the world" - US
President Truman and English Churchill had speculated before Stalin about the power the
western allies had with a new secret weapon. On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was
dropped on Hiroshima. According to Ian Gray, Stalin's biographer: "Stalin and the majority
of Russians immediately understood the terrible meaning of this fact ... Stalin realized
that the Americans had used the bomb mainly to impress and threaten Russia". Stalin and the
Soviets were right: the American Secretary of State, James Byrnes, recognized that the bomb
was necessary not against Japan, but "to make Russia moldable to Europe".
As the historian Pauwels has explained, the initial will of the Soviets in Europe was
not to have like-minded regimes and their own zone of influence, but to intervene in
Germany to prevent it from engaging in a second war, this time together with its former
allies against the USSR. This is demonstrated by the fact that until well into the post-war
period, the Soviets did not help to make any political-social change in the liberated
countries. It was Truman's nuclear policy that forced the Soviets to stand face to face
with the Americans in Eastern Europe, thus deterring American aviation: from this way they
would have to carry out a long trip until arriving at the Soviet cities where they had to
drop their bombs. This caused the political and social changes in Eastern Europe to
accelerate, which, however, were already taking place autonomously since the end of the war
thanks to the triumph of the popular anti-fascist forces. This fact not only saved the USSR
from a new war and enabled socialism to survive: stability in Eastern Europe laid the
foundations for a development of national liberation struggles and for socialism throughout
the world: in 1949 the victory of the Chinese Revolution heralded the triumph of many
others, putting all capitalism in danger of death.
In parallel, just after the Cold War started by imperialism, the conservative British
leader Churchill theorized about the need to build an Iron Curtain to contain the
communists and allegedly asked the American President Truman to attack the USSR with the
atomic bomb by means of a preemptive attack. Churchill was not just any character, but one
of the most influential leaders of the British Empire, champion of English colonialism and
the participation of his country in World War I, therefore responsible for many millions of
deaths and suffering of peoples.
That was the real reason for the delay in publishing Animal Farm . Orwell,
naturally, during the anti-fascist war could not see his anti-Soviet work published until
the end of the conflict, since it would have been quite awkward for the Western governments
allied to the USSR, who were risking their lives against the Nazis, to criminalize in this
way a friendly government. On the other hand, at that time, from the Orwellian model, it
would be difficult for western and world public opinion to understand how it was possible
that the Soviet people fought with such a degree of sacrifice and heroism, expelling the
Nazis from Europe: all the other bourgeois regimes, where there was freedom, had collapsed
rapidly and had collaborated with the Nazis.
It was in connection with these events that the first copies of Animal farm were
placed on the shelves of bookstores. Precisely the publication coincided with the end of
World War II and the dissolution of the anti-fascist alliance between England, USA, and the
USSR. The first edition is exactly from 1945 in England, published by Secker &
Wargburg, from London, and from 1946 in the USA, published by Harcourt, from New York. The
capitalist governments, which were imminently going to promote Animal Farm , were
evaluating different options to attack the USSR: from rearming German units as shock
brigades to attack the Soviets, to the launch of "preventive" atomic bombs. The prestige
that the USSR had among all the workers of the world, fundamentally the Europeans who
suffered the Nazi atrocities, was enormous, as well as among the intellectual and popular
sectors, whose reflection could be followed in the great influence that some communist
parties had. It was necessary to dismantle this prestige to sweep the opposition of the
world public opinion to an armed aggression against those who liberated Europe from Nazism,
and Orwell's novels came as a ring to a finger for this purpose, since they were a good
instrument to spread among the so called mass culture, just as later were the film versions
of his works.
Albert Escusa, gives in his essay a good semblance of what kind of person could Orwell
really be:
Orwell was above all a great individualist, with some important personal contradictions and
prejudices that led him to oscillate along various paths without being able to commit
himself in a stable and permanent way to anything that was not himself, in such a way that,
when he became disenchanted with some social processes that he was unable to interpret
correctly and scientifically, ended up ranting against what he believed to be the object of
his anger.
We can see it in Corbière's sharp description: "Who was Orwell? A sniper, a
skeptic who devoted his efforts to Manichean criteria describing the great social and
political contradictions of our time. Anarchist, Semitrotskyist in Spain, Labor in England,
free thinker, undercover anti-Semite, his real ideas reveal a kind of elitism.
He had an intense imagination but his methodology of thought was restricted,
one-sided.
No that I am aware, but, if interested, you could translate it with a translator.
Since the essay is quite long, you could translate paragraph by paragraph, then read the whol
thing once assembled.
A bit complicated, but worth the effort, the essay is a well researched work, wu¡ith
several referecnes as weel worth reading, like a disection of Orwell, his epoch and
motives.
Oh dear. Relatively prosperous middle class means descended from Earls of Westmorland, family
tree of Fanes, de Veres, Grosvenors, at a little reach basically related to the entire
peerage. True, Orwell's father was a bit of a dope, he did manage to contract a marriage to a
very wealthy woman. Jacintha Buddicom's memoir, Eric and Us, about growing up living next
door to the Blairs, will tell you what 'middle class' life was like.
Orwell maintained the friendships from St. Cyprians and Eton for life. Pretty much
everyone on the roster could be considered as spooks and agents. All of them tied to old
money, old family, government service. Government as MI6 and CIA.
I think he's a great writer. My copy of the four volumes of Collected Essays Letters &
Journalism is still right here next to the fireplace. All the rest of it around here
somewhere, even the minor novels from the 30s. But no illusions what team he is on or what
station he was born to.
Winston Smith means 'maker of Winston', as in broadcasting from Room 101 and forging the
myth of Winston Churchill. Orwell was a big boy when he did that and was far past having any
illusions. He created the myth that Room 101 of Broadcasting House was the worst place in the
world. And talked of how the war years were the best years of his life.
@Posted by: oldhippie | May 20 2020 23:13 utc | 48
I think he's a great writer
Not even so, more proper a plagiarist and propagandist at the service of Western
totalitarian imperialism.
Since we are in the task of deconstructing Orwell, let´s go to the end...
In addition to the Animal Farm , one of the works that most influenced the
construction of Western totalitarianism against the Communists was 1984 . It shows
an overview of socialism in the USSR similar to a delusional totalitarian and monstrous
drama, with a Big Brother (Stalin) who had absolute social control over the individuals
under his rule, through a sophisticated mind control mechanism. This work became a
must-read for CIA officers and a dependent body called the Council for Psychological
Strategies, in addition to the fact that NATO used the entire vocabulary of this novel
during the 1950s in its anti-communist strategy.12 It is interesting to know how He
conceived this book, since it was apparently a plagiarism Orwell did to another
disenchanted of Bolshevism, in this case a Russian writer, in the opinion of the writer
Emilio J. Corbière: "Orwell's was a conscious plagiarism, since he explained it
himself in another of his works. The plot, the main characters, the symbols and the climate
of its narration, belonged to a completely forgotten Russian writer of the beginning of the
century: Evgeny Zamyatin. In his book We , the Russian disillusioned with socialism
after the failure of the 1905 revolution, devoted his efforts to anathematizing the Social
Democratic Workers Party founded by Jorge Plejanov. When the October revolution happened -
in 1917 - Zamyatin went into exile in Paris, where he wrote his posthumous anti-communist
work"
This opinion is also shared by the historian Isaac Deutscher in his work The
Mysticism of Cruelty , an essay about 1984 , where he states that Orwell
"borrowed the idea of 1984, the plot, the main characters, the symbols and
the whole plot situation from the work We of Evgeny Zamyatin"
We see how behind the image of a great writer, lies the reality of a plagiarist of
stories, which served to elaborate theoretical and academic models on the functioning of
socialism in the Soviet Union totally adjusted to the requirements of imperialism in the
anti-communist Cold War. The impact of 1984 was tremendous among the population,
creating an atmosphere of anti-communist and anti-Soviet paranoia that was very effective
among the masses, as the disturbing personal testimony of Isaac Deutscher demonstrates:
"Have you read that book? You have to read it, sir. Then you will know why we have to drop
the atomic bomb on the Bolsheviks! With those words, a miserable blind newspaper vendor
recommended me in New York 1984 , a few weeks before Orwell's death".
H. Schmatz.
I am not a good book reader but I did read 1984 and it definitely seemed to be a veiled
critique on Communism.
However it seems the story is now more fitting to capitalism.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), happily amplified by the Public Broadcasting
System (PBS) in the United States which carries its World News, continues to pump out its
regular dreck about the alleged economic chaos in Russia and the imagined miserable state of
the Russian people.
It is all lies of course. Patrick Armstrong 's
authoritative regular updates including his reports on this website are a necessary corrective
to such crude propaganda.
But amid all their countless fiascoes and failures in every other field (including the
highest per capita death rate from COVID-19 in Europe, and one of the highest in the world) the
British remain world leaders at managing global Fake News. As long as the tone remains
restrained and dignified, literally any slander will be swallowed by the credulous and every
foul scandal and shame can be confidently covered up.
None of this would have surprised the late, great George Orwell. It is fashionable these
days to endlessly trot him out as a zombie (dead but alleged to be living – so that he
cannot set the record straight himself) critic of Russia and all the other global news outlets
outside the control of the New York and London plutocracies. And it is certainly true, that
Orwell, whose hatred and fear of communism was very real, served before his death as an
informer to MI-5, British domestic security.
But it was not the Soviet Union, Stalin's show trials or his experiences with the Trotskyite
POUM group in Barcelona and Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War that "made Orwell Orwell" as
the Anglo-America Conventional Wisdom Narrative has it. It was his visceral loathing of the
British Empire – compounded during World War II by his work for the BBC which he
eventually gave up in disgust.
And it was his BBC experiences that gave Orwell the model for his unforgettable Ministry of
Truth in his great classic "1984."
George Orwell had worked in one of the greatest of all world centers of Fake News. And he
knew it.
More profoundly, the great secret of George Orwell's life has been hiding in plain sight for
70 years since he died. Orwell became a sadistic torturer in the service of the British Empire
during his years in Burma, modern Myanmar. And as a fundamentally decent man, he was so
disgusted by what he had done that he spent the rest of his life not just atoning but slowly
and willfully committing suicide before his heartbreakingly premature death while still in his
40s.
The first important breakthrough in this fundamental reassessment of Orwell comes from one
of the best books on him. "Finding George Orwell in Burma" was published in 2005 and written by
"Emma Larkin", a pseudonym for an outstanding American journalist in Asia whose identity I have
long suspected to be an old friend and deeply respected colleague, and whose continued
anonymity I respect.
"Larkin" took the trouble to travel widely in Burma during its repressive military
dictatorship and her superb research reveals crucial truths about Orwell. According to his own
writings and his deeply autobiographical novel "Burmese Days" Orwell loathed all his time as a
British colonial policeman in Burma, modern Myanmar. The impression he systematically gives in
that novel and in his classic essay "Shooting an Elephant" is of a bitterly lonely, alienated,
deeply unhappy man, despised and even loathed by his fellow British colonialists throughout
society and a ludicrous failure at his job.
This was not, however, the reality that "Larkin" uncovered. All surviving witnesses agreed
that Orwell – Eric Blair as he then still was – remained held in high regard during
his years in the colonial police service. He was a senior and efficient officer. Indeed it was
precisely his knowledge of crime, vice, murder and the general underside of human society
during his police colonial service while still in his 20s that gave him the street smarts,
experience, and moral authority to see through all the countless lies of right and left, of
American capitalists and British imperialists as well as European totalitarians for the rest of
his life.
The second revelation to throw light on what Orwell had to do in those years comes from one
of the most famous and horrifying scenes in "1984." Indeed, almost nothing even in the memoirs
of Nazi death camp survivors has anything like it: That is the scene where "O'Brien", the
secret police officer tortures the "hero" (if he can be called that) Winston Smith by locking
his face to a cage in which a starving rat is ready to pounce and devour him if it is
opened.
I remember thinking, when I was first exposed to the power of "1984" at my outstanding
Northern Irish school, "What kind of mind could invent something as horrific as that?") The
answer was so obvious that I like everyone else missed it entirely.
Orwell did not "invent" or "come up" with the idea as a fictional plot device: It was just a
routine interrogation technique used by the British colonial police in Burma, modern Myanmar.
Orwell never "brilliantly" invented such a diabolical technique of torture as a literary
device. He did not have to imagine it. It was routinely employed by himself and his colleagues.
That was how and why the British Empire worked so well for so long. They knew what they were
doing. And what they did was not nice at all.
A final step in my enlightenment about Orwell, whose writings I have revered all my life
– and still do – was provided by our alarmingly brilliant elder daughter about a
decade ago when she too was given "1984" to read as part of her school curriculum. Discussing
it with her one day, I made some casual obvious remark that Orwell was in the novel as Winston
Smith.
My American-raised teenager then naturally corrected me. "No, Dad, " she said. "Orwell isn't
Winston, or he's not just Winston. He's O'Brien too. O'Brien actually likes Winston. He doesn't
want to torture him. He even admires him. But he does it because it's his duty."
She was right, of course.
But how could Orwell the great enemy of tyranny, lies and torture so identify with and
understand so well the torturer? It was because he himself had been one.
"Emma Larkin's" great book brings out that Orwell as a senior colonial police officer in the
1920s was a leading figure in a ruthless war waged by the British imperial authorities against
drug and human trafficking crime cartels every bit as vicious and ruthless as those in modern
Ukraine, Columbia and Mexico today. It was a "war on terror" where anything and everything was
permitted to "get the job done."
The young Eric Blair was so disgusted by the experience that when he returned home he
abandoned the respectable middle class life style he had always enjoyed and became, not just an
idealistic socialist as many in those days did, but a penniless, starving tramp. He even
abandoned his name and very identity. He suffered a radical personality collapse: He killed
Eric Blair. He became George Orwell.
Orwell's early famous book "Down and Out in London and Paris" is a testament to how much he
literally tortured and humiliated himself in those first years back from Burma. And for the
rest of his life.
He ate miserably badly, was skinny and ravaged by tuberculosis and other health problems,
smoked heavily and denied himself any decent medical care. His appearance was always
abominable. His friend, the writer Malcolm Muggeridge speculated that Orwell wanted to remake
himself as a caricature of a tramp.
The truth clearly was that Orwell never forgave himself for what he did as a young agent of
empire in Burma. Even his literally suicidal decision to go to the most primitive, cold, wet
and poverty-stricken corner of creation in a remote island off Scotland to finish "1984" in
isolation before he died was consistent with the merciless punishments he had inflicted on
himself all his life since leaving Burma.
The conclusion is clear: For all the intensity of George Orwell's experiences in Spain, his
passion for truth and integrity, his hatred of the abuse of power did not originate from his
experiences in the Spanish Civil War. They all flowed directly from his own actions as an agent
of the British Empire in Burma in the 1920s: Just as his creation of the Ministry of Truth
flowed directly from his experience of working in the Belly of the Beast of the BBC in the
early 1940s.
George Orwell spent more than 20 years slowly committing suicide because of the terrible
crimes he committed as a torturer for the British Empire in Burma. We can therefore have no
doubt what his horror and disgust would be at what the CIA did under President George W. Bush
in its "Global War on Terror." Also, Orwell would identify at once and without hesitation the
real fake news flowing out of New York, Atlanta, Washington and London today, just as he did in
the 1930s and 1940s.
Let us therefore reclaim and embrace The Real George Orwell: The cause of fighting to
prevent a Third World War depends on it.
Interesting book "Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime " published in 2013 by PETER C
GØTZSCHE
He points out "Science philosopher Karl Popper in "The Open Society and Its Enemies"
depicts the totalitarian, closed society as a rigidly ordered state in which freedom of
expression and discussion of crucial issues are ruthlessly suppressed. Most of the time, when
I have tried to publish unwelcome truths about the drug industry, I have been exposed to the
journal's lawyers, and even after I have documented that everything I say is correct and have
been said before by others, I have often experienced that important bits have been removed or
that my paper was rejected for no other reason than fear of litigation. This is one of the
reasons I decided to write this book, as I have discovered that I have much more freedom when
I write books. Popper would have viewed the pharmaceutical industry as an enemy of the open
society.
Rigorous science should put itself at risk of being falsified and this practice should be
protected against those who try to impede scientific understanding, as when the industry
intimidates those who discover harms of its drugs. Protecting the hypotheses by ad hoc
modifications, such as undeclared changes to the measured outcomes or the analysis plan once
the sponsor has seen the results, or by designing trials that make them immune to refutation,
puts the hypotheses in the same category as pseudoscience.
In healthcare, the open democratic society has become an oligarchy of corporations whose
interests serve the profit motive of the industry and shape public policy, including that of
weakened regulatory agencies. Our governments have failed to regulate an industry, which has
become more and more powerful and almighty, and failed to protect scientific objectivity and
academic curiosity from commercial forces."
Thats about it in a nutshell. Too bad the good scientists are all muzzled. Only the
politicized fraudsters get the good press.
We are living in strange times indeed, this crisis raises many questions about the nature of
freedom and what our expectations are, or should be. Everyone has their own notions about what
freedom means and how far that should extend to oneself and indeed, to everyone else.
I want to start with a look at where we've come from before I look at where we are now, as I
feel it gives a better understanding of our definitions of freedom and a better context for
viewing where we are, at this moment in time.
Society probably started with the tribe – maybe not even having a leader if the
numbers where small enough, say 10 people. Tribes of scores or more obviously became hard to
manage and so, undoubtedly, this led to the idea of a leader or a group of leaders – a
chief, or a council of chiefs. Such a system seems to have worked well, so long as the chiefs
acted in the best interest of the tribe, and not in their own best interest. Tribes and early
kingdoms often had a mechanism for dealing with a poor leader – the symbolic marriage of
the leader to the land and the right to depose, or even execute, a leader that failed to live
up to expectations.
Such concepts of leadership are ancient but have survived in various places into the modern
era, including Ireland where I live. Although the practice associated with this custom is long
gone, knowledge of it remains vaguely in the public consciousness and more definitively in the
realms of scholarship and Celtic Neo-Paganism. However, societies across the globe began to
move beyond this cherished accountability millenia ago – with the rise of despotic
monarchy, something that still exists as an unfortunate anachronism even now.
As tribes grew into countries and countries grew into empires, monarchs became decreasingly
accountable to their citizens, or rather subjects – those who are subjugated. While many
monarchs felt an obligation, both 'divine' and moral to behave with care and responsibility,
others acted in pure self interest, free of any accountability for their actions. With the
backing a large army or, sizeable personal guard, it became increasing difficult to hold
monarchs accountable and one had to rely on goodwill in most cases, rather than
enforcement.
Of course, there have been countless deposing of monarchs, by the people or by rival
claimants, although the latter didn't always turn out to be beneficial. Probably the most
famous of these is that of Galus Julius Caesar, the Dictator for life of the final years of the
Roman Republic, who gave his name to the title Caesar, Czar and Keiser. He was brutally
murdered by Brutus (hence the word brutal) and we all know how that turned out the for Roman
Republic.
The republic itself was a form of democracy, based on an earlier model from Greece, a
civilization that had immense influence on Rome. Of course, Athenian democracy was nothing like
what we now regard as democracy. The right to decide how government was organised and what it
did fell to the hands of an elite group - demokratia , or "rule by the people" was only for
citizens and of these, only the men could vote. At the time (507 BC) this meant 40,000 men, out
of a much larger population, but in reality no more than about 5000 men could attend
assemblies, due to other commitments. Still, it was a ground-breaking step, so long as you
weren't a foreigner, criminal, woman, child or a slave.
It is from these Greek origins that we get the word democracy and the notion of rights and
freedom for all. Over time there have been variations on this model that have been tried out
– constitutional monarchies, republics, socialist states, fascist states and communist
states, which have varying levels of input for the masses. The masses might also be referred to
as 'plebeians' as the Romans liked to call ordinary folk, a corrupted form of which still
exists as a minor insult - pleb.
However, through most of recorded history, the most common system has been monarchy,
although one could hardly describe it as the most popular. Simpler than a democracy and easy to
enforce – notions such as corruption, fairness and accountability do not come into play,
as divine rule (e.g. the divine right of kings) gives the ruler carte blanche to do whatever
they god-damn like, unless their despotism provokes a revolt. Of course, revolt has happened,
from time to time, throughout history and one of the most famous ones is that of the barons in
England against king John.
The Magna Carta (Great Charter, of 1215) is considered by many as the bedrock of Western
civilization and democracy, despite the fact that it only gave limited concessions to a very
small number of nobles. It was a start at least, and perhaps enabled further inroads into the
monarchic monopoly on power. The Peasants' Revolt of 1381, against Richard II of England was a
major shift. Led by a commoner (Wat Tyler) it was a great embarrassment for Richard, who did
not have a standing army on hand. He was forced to pretend to negotiate with the rebels, who
camped at Blackheath, while he secretly ordered the Mayor of London to raise an army to
disperse and execute the protestors.
There are countless other examples of rebellion against monarchs across the world, but most
of them are forgotten. Perhaps the best remembered rebellion is that of the French paupers,
against the Bourbon monarchy and the entire aristocracy of France. This violent and
bloodthirsty revolution sent shudders of terror across the monarchies of the world and
precipitated a programme of reform, based on fear of similar events occurring.
Of course, some countries carried on regardless – Russia and America being
particularly sad examples, as Russia only abolished serfdom in 1861, while USA only abolished
slavery in 1865. One could justifiably say that the lives of these ordinary people, who were
now 'citizens' hardly improved as their freedom was pretty much nominal. This, in Russia, led
to the revolution of 1917, due to the intransigence of the Czar/Tsar (Caesar) Nicholai II
Alexandrovich Romanov II. The overthrow of the Russian system, inspired by the ideas of Marx
and Engels, led to a Bolshevik government headed by Vladimir Lenin. Whatever notions the
Soviets had, Lenin was a de facto Tzar in waiting and Stalin was certainly that, if not an
uncrowned heir to Ivan The Terrible.
Post World War II, we supposedly have a new age of democracy and freedom, but that only
applies to some. In truth, almost the whole world collection of governments has learned the art
of propaganda - thanks to the astounding upskilling efforts of the National Socialists (Nazis)
of Germany, who took this to new heights (or lows rather), turning it almost into an artform.
While we have been led to believe that we are free and democratic, we have never been more
exposed to lies and propaganda than we are now. The biggest lie of all is that we live in a
democracy, when in fact we actually only get to choose a new set of corrupt and self-serving
narcissists, every 4 or 5 years.
Democracies, the world over, have been bought – lobbyists have far more power than the
electorate could ever hope to achieve. What we in fact have is the illusion of democracy
– state agencies act without oversight, individuals have no say over the manifesto and
policies of parties in power and have no mechanism to undo or prevent undesirable actions by
governments. The only mechanisms available are the occasional referenda (instigated under
pressure), protest (peaceful or otherwise) and violent overthrow.
In most cases, the effort and risk of violent overthrow is considered too much for the
majority of people – it takes dire poverty, starvation and horrific coercion before the
'plebs' are pushed to the brink. Governments are aware of this and generally apply the 'boiling
frog' method of restricting people's freedoms and the removal of privacy and general rights.
However, they do on occasion overstep the mark or fail to adequately conceal their stealthy
nefarious actions – which inevitably leads to protest or insurrection.
History has proven that violent insurrection usually fails, but it is rather foolish of
authoritarian governments to take a gamble on this not happening. What is far more effective
for us 'plebs' is non-violent insurrection, in the form of non-compliance - this worked wonders
for both Gandhi and for Martin Luther-King, two of the most inspirational leaders of the 20th
century. Nelson Mandella is another fine example of someone who led a monumental change, in
South Africa, while also avoiding a catastrophic bloodbath, again through advocating of
non-violence and showing exceptional leadership skills.
At this moment in time, we are held hostage by a virus and the fear of what it might do to
humanity. While public safety has to be a priority, one has to ask the question – what is
this really about? Is this a manufactured crisis or is it is just opportunistic governments
capitalizing on their best chance to roll out new draconian measures? Temporary emergency
powers is one thing, but if there is no rollback after the crisis is over, what then? What if
the crisis is one without end – like George Orwell's perpetual war in his novel 1984?
We have come to expect freedom, we are told that we live in the 'free world' yet we see our
rights and freedoms and privacy being eroded by government legislation, corporate invasive
technology and data collection. Where do we draw the line? When do we say enough is enough?
Strangely, the same technology that enables our surveillance monitoring is also the most
powerful tool at our disposal. Internet and telecommunications enables us to share information,
just as the 'system' collects information about all of us. For many, it has opened our eyes
about government agendas, methods and operations as we now have unprecedented access to
worldwide information, often in real-time, or within minutes and hours of events happening.
Many believe that a new era of oppression is being rolled out, right now as we sit in our
homes, enabled by the high-power, high-speed and low latency 5G network, worldwide by a hidden
agency. Conspiracies aside, there are many questions to be asked about our rights, what our
freedoms should consist of and what the limits of government and corporate actions should be.
We need to ask those questions, we need to demand answers and show the 'powers that be' that
the thirst for true democracy is still alive and kicking. If we volunteer to be imprisoned or
to become our own jailors then there is no hope for humanity. As in the past, humanity needs to
assert itself, in order to remain free of despotism and it has never been more urgent than now.
Corny as it may be, the simplest way to express this is for me to repeat the words of the late
Bob Marley - "Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights!"
"... There is little doubt that the modern cult of power worship is bound up with the modern man's feeling that life here and now is the only life there is. If death ends everything, it becomes much harder to believe that you can be in the right even if you are defeated . I would say that the decay in the belief in personal immortality has been as important as the rise of machine civilization. ..."
"... Since society is held together by this myth system – the beliefs and values people live for and live by – that sustains it, societies have always had to offer symbolic "answers" to death. For without a meaningful symbolic for coming to terms with death, human action would be stymied and people would be reduced to what the psychiatrist Allan Wheelis termed "intense, preoccupying yearning." ..."
"... When leaders speak, the children hear the inner voices of their parents telling them to be careful, be very careful, the bogeyman is everywhere, so listen and obey. Freud, the Jewish atheist, and Dostoevsky, the Russian Orthodox Christian, were in agreement about people's desire to give up their freedom to authority figures who would allegedly shelter them within their warm embrace. ..."
"... The easiest way to do this is to convince people that death is stalking them, for the bogeyman is always death in one form or another. ..."
"... It works to get people to support the terrifying sadism of wars against fabricated "others, ..."
"... It works to get people to give up their freedoms out of fear of "terrorists," who are said to slide and hide in the interstices of everyday life, ready to pounce and kill at any moment. ..."
"... For the Grand Inquisitor represents those power elites across the world who wish to cower people into accepting their dicta on Covid-19 as truth without questioning its logic or rationale. ..."
"... The use of technology to control behaviour by denying holidays to people, denying promotions etc all based on credit scores and similar monitoring has to be seen by the wealthy as a model of what can be achieved by the combination of ruthless force and control over information. ..."
"... All are brainwashed from birth. Its not "capitalism" its is a parasitic banking cabals economy . ..."
"... When the education system has been designed to eliminate the use of critical thinking and the purveyors of propaganda control the vast majority of the MSM, academia plus the creation of a veneer of democracy, it is little wonder so many people have swallowed this lie. ..."
"... many who call themselves atheists worship science( but not science as knowledge as it originally meant) ..."
"... The cabal wants only their narrative( lies as the truth) they want the truth of who we are and that we are co creators in this world unknown to us . ..."
Since death is one idea that has no history except as an idea and not a reality any of us have experienced, it is the most frightening
idea there is and also quite simple. It is the ultimate unknown. It has always haunted human beings, whether consciously or unconsciously.
It lies at the root of war, violence, religion, art, love, and civilization. The good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly,
why we like to win and not lose, pass and not fail, "pass on" and not die. It is so funny and so sad. We would be lost without it,
even when we feel lost when thinking about it. And it is fundamental for understanding the action and reaction to Covid-19.
Societies have always been people banded together in the face of death. And since people are not just physical beings but symbolic
creatures who can think and imagine the past and the future, societies are necessarily mythic symbol systems whose job is not only
to protect people physically, but symbolically as well.
Sometimes, however, the protection is a protection racket with racketeers holding people hostage to fabricated fears that keep
them locked in a living-death.
Thus death, this most potent imaginative idea and reality that doesn't exist except as a mystery about which anything we say is
speculation, can be used for good and evil, depending on who controls society.
Death is the great fear, the human haunting that hangs by a thread over life like the sword of Damocles.
In 1944 in a newspaper column, George Orwell made an astute remark:
There is little doubt that the modern cult of power worship is bound up with the modern man's feeling that life here and now
is the only life there is. If death ends everything, it becomes much harder to believe that you can be in the right even if you
are defeated . I would say that the decay in the belief in personal immortality has been as important as the rise of machine civilization.
Beliefs, of course, like "personal immortality" and all others, such as the recent rise in the belief in atheism, which is as
much a belief as belief in God, are, partially at least, relative to time and place, and develop out of social storytelling. The
"hard facts" on which many feel their lives and security rest are themselves dependent upon the symbols which give them legitimacy.
Reality is indeed precarious with society suspended by a web of myths and symbols. It is through cultural and social symbol systems
that society's meaning is transmitted to individuals, and it is within the symbol systems that the control and release of action
resides.
In today's electronic mass media world, those who control the mass media that control the narrative flow – the storytelling –
control the majority's beliefs and actions.
Since society is held together by this myth system – the beliefs and values people live for and live by – that sustains it,
societies have always had to offer symbolic "answers" to death. For without a meaningful symbolic for coming to terms with death,
human action would be stymied and people would be reduced to what the psychiatrist Allan Wheelis termed "intense, preoccupying
yearning."
Today we can hear such yearning everywhere.
Shortly after Orwell made his prescient comment in The Tribune, nuclear weapons were developed and used by the United States to
kill hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians. With those weapons and their use, the ages-old symbolic narrative of life
and death was transformed in a flash.
"The significance of the possibility of nuclear death is that it radically affects the meaning of death, of immortality,
of life itself," wrote Hans Morgenthau.
The traditional symbolic sources that once served to allow humans to transcend death were fundamentally undercut, and the search
for new modes of death transcendence was carried on beneath the portentous covering of the nuclear umbrella.
A qualitative transformation in the meaning of human existence was thus brought about as humans, who had the weapons, replaced
the belief in God as the holder of the power over life and death, since nuclear war could result in the extinction of human life,
leaving no one left to die.
This is our world today, and it is where the Covid-19 story takes place. A world not just of nuclear fear, but a host of other
fears constantly inflamed by the mass media that hypnotize people through the conjuring of death-fear.
In his great work on group psychology, Freud showed us how it was not just mental contagion and the herd instinct that got people
to join in group behavior. People could be induced to become little children and obey their leaders because they have "an extreme
passion for authority."
When leaders speak, the children hear the inner voices of their parents telling them to be careful, be very careful, the bogeyman
is everywhere, so listen and obey. Freud, the Jewish atheist, and Dostoevsky, the Russian Orthodox Christian, were in agreement about
people's desire to give up their freedom to authority figures who would allegedly shelter them within their warm embrace.
The easiest way to do this is to convince people that death is stalking them, for the bogeyman is always death in one form
or another.
It works to get people to support the terrifying sadism of wars against fabricated "others," who are always portrayed
as aliens who are out to kill the good people.
It works to get people to give up their freedoms out of fear of "terrorists," who are said to slide and hide in the interstices
of everyday life, ready to pounce and kill at any moment.
And it works to get people to obey orders to protect themselves from terrifying viruses that are lying in wait everywhere to strike
them dead.
In his novel The Brothers Karamazov , Dostoevsky said that people want miracles, mystery, and authority, not freedom. His
Grand Inquisitor, while a fictional creation, lives on in reality.
For the Grand Inquisitor represents those power elites across the world who wish to cower people into accepting their dicta
on Covid-19 as truth without questioning its logic or rationale.
To question has become an act of insubordination deserving death by censorship or the defiling of one's name via the term "conspiracy
theorist," a name used by the CIA to dismiss anyone questioning its murder of President Kennedy. Death comes in many forms, and the
fear of it has always been used by the powerful to render the common people speechless and obedient.
How can any thinking person, anyone not totally crippled by fear, not question what is going on with the coronavirus disaster
when reading what Peter Koenig, a thirty-year veteran economist of the World Bank and World Health Organization, writes in his article
The Farce and Diabolical Agenda
of a 'Universal Lockdown' :
The pandemic was needed as a pretext to halt and collapse the world economy and the underlying social fabric.
There is no coincidence. There were a number of preparatory events, all pointing into the direction of a worldwide monumental
historic disaster. It started at least 10 years ago – probably considerably earlier – with the infamous 2010 Rockefeller Report,
which painted the first phase of a monstrous Plan, called the "Lock Step" scenario. Among the last preparatory moves for the "pandemic"
was Event 201, held in NYC on 18 October 2019.
The event was sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and the World
Economic Forum (WEF), the club of the rich and powerful that meets every January in Davos, Switzerland. Participating were a number
of pharmaceuticals (vaccine interest groups), as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s of the US and – of
China.
One of the objectives of Event 201 was a computer simulation of a corona virus pandemic. The simulated virus was called SARS-2-nCoV,
or later 2019-nCoV. The simulation results were disastrous, killing 65 million people in 18 months and plunging the stock market
by more than 30% -- causing untold unemployment and bankruptcies. Precisely the scenario of which we are now living the beginning.
The Lock Step scenario foresees a number of ghastly and disturbing events or components of The Plan to be implemented by the so
called Agenda ID2020, a Bill Gates creation, fully integrated into the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) – target date for
completion – 2030 (also called Agenda 2030, the hidden agenda unknown to most of the UN members), the same target date for completion
of the Agenda ID02020.
I ask the question but I am afraid I know the answer: miracle, mystery, and authority usually defeat evidence and simple logic.
Fear of death and free thought scare children. The Grand Inquisitor lives on:
But man seeks to bow before that only which is recognized by the greater majority, if not by all his fellow-men, as having
a right to be worshipped; whose rights are so unquestionable that men agree unanimously to bow down to it.
Death: A simple idea with such a powerful punch.
JoeC ,
It isn't just about the fear of death. It's also the fear of being responsible for the death of others. It's no accident that
they've chosen a contagion as our imaginary enemy. We become the visible enemy if we refuse to wear face masks, abide social distance,
wash our hands every 30 seconds or refuse a vaccine when it comes to it etc etc. Hence the laws that will follow. We will soon
be public enemy number one. The new terrorists. I'm not scared of dying but I'm petrified of being persecuted for not believing
this shit. What sort of life is that?
a belief. The author adds his on baggage to an otherwise lucid
article, which rather diminishes the other truths he mentions ?
BigB ,
Excellent stuff, with plenty to think about as usual. As a proviso: Ed's sociology and ethnography needs tightening up though.
The big cultural repertoire of myths and symbols has a name; several names actually nomos, Weltanschauung, Weltansicht (cosmographic
worldview or wide world sight), and *sensus communis* (the consensual common sense). Which is the consensus of views everyone
shares.
The last is from Giambattista Vico: who also said: "Verum esse ipsum factum" ("What is true is precisely what is made [up]").
Which is the verum-factum principle of worldviews. The ideal eternal cosmological history is subjectively made up, culturally
constructed, as a consensually maintained worldbuilding and world-maintaining mythological storytelling.
To which the individual is socialised not once – from birth through education – not twice – in the workforce – but continually
as a process of cultural individuality making. Which is not all one way, top-down traffic of obedience and control – but a reflexive
and causal circularity. The big bunch of historically specific myths and symbols make and maintain the person: just as the person
makes and maintains the big bunch of historically specific myths as a consensually maintained worldbuilding and world-maintaining
mythological storytelling. The individual self is itself a cultural constructivism.
It cannot be any other way: otherwise there can be no common ground for communication and there is only communication. Or participatory
sense-making: no one can have their own language or behavioural repertoire maintained far from the socially regulated consensus
and continue to make sense. Maintaining the dictionary definition of words (intension) and the encyclopaedic repertoire of social
norms and modes of behaviour is critical to the meaning of the overall order. And there is only the order. Very uneasy order.
The individual finds themselves historically situated in the ordinate nexus of thinking, speaking, and acting in a constrained,
shared, and lawfully regulated landscape of language, culture, society, state and market economy. There is no 'outside': except
for the retreat into solipsism and ahistoric flights of imagination. We make our own history: but not autonomously and not in
circumstances of our own choosing.
Cultural construction and reproduction – and the worldview maintainence of socially constructed reality – is a permanent process.
Following the basic processes of social constructivism – as laid out by Berger and Luckman. Which are: habitualisation by subjectivated
externalisation and reification by objectivated internalisation as a recurrent, resonant, and reflexive lifelong process.
We are part of the tissue and fabric of socially constructed reality. And socially constructed reality is part of the tissue
and fabric of us: the flesh of the cultural worldview.
Of course: the biggest lie of the principle of cultural constructivist storytelling is that what is told is naturally objective,
true, and real. And some of it is lawfully authoritative (like this old computer epidemiology model I had lying around). Which
is what gives the story its universal regulative ordinate control and constative overpower.
I mean, who would want to self-admit they were regurgitating institutionalised and habitualised false beliefs and mistaken
abstractive assumptions about the objective nature of things that were just a bunch of made up and recycled socialisation and
pacification rites of a cultural constructivist performance?
Truth, self, and social reality itself is constructed by such rites.
And what if the nomos – the ordered and naturalised ordinate principle – which is a cultures own talisman against chaos, indiscipline,
and made up shite about virology turns out to be chaotic, restrictive, petrifying and rapidly fossilising as a permanent order
of fascising bollox and corporatist control?
If the fossilising order is worse than the disorder it symbolically wards off and guards against: and the culturally created
fear of death worse than the natural process of dying then what?
Is it better that the institutionalised and institutionalising lawful ordering is in principle false and an unjust draconian
social realism? Or that it is objective, rational, and scientifically real? And eternally and universally valid?
What if a society had been rationalised and institutionalised into a universal analytical reasoning, an empiric objectivity,
a historically contingent subjectivity, and a nomological scientific principle that were in fact falsely constructed? And just
habitually and consensually maintained as a lawful, juridical, and regulatory idealism of an eternally natural cosmological order?
Which just happened to turn out to be totalitarian fascistic co-participatory dumbfuckerry?
That culture would find itself in a headfuck situation of a nomological breakdown of its worldview and its interwoven individual
identities most of which would want to shelter in the pretence of being ahistorically situated outside of language, culture, and
thought in a nomological no mans land. Which is exactly the abnegation of cultural creativity that precipitated the meaning crisis
and breakdown of order.
I'm so glad I do not live in such a culture. That would indeed be terrifying.
😱 😱 😱 😱 😱
aspnaz ,
An interesting article that reminds me of the difference between westerners and the mainland Chinese whom I believe are the model
that will used to create the future world.
I am not talking about communism, the Chinese gave up communism ages ago, they are now the world's premier imperialists, using
capitalism to drive their influence across the globe. But their control over people is surely the model aspired to by any person
wanting to rule the world.
The use of technology to control behaviour by denying holidays to people, denying promotions etc all based on credit scores
and similar monitoring has to be seen by the wealthy as a model of what can be achieved by the combination of ruthless force and
control over information.
The response of the Chinese to the virus – the lockdown – was seen in the west as China caring for its people, but here in
HK it is still commonly seen as China panicking because it thought that the people would be afraid and would turn on the government
for not protecting them. It was riot control, not virus control, hence the arrest of people spreading virus rumours.
tonyopmoc ,
Edward Curtin, what you wrote is completely brilliant, in the few minutes it took me to read it, you took me through the vastness
of time, and my entire physical and spiritual existence. thank you. tony
Hugh O'Neill ,
Another thought-provoking article, Ed. I was reminded of four quotes:
1. G.K. Chesterton: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing; he believes in anything"
2. On the dropping of the first atomic bomb, Oppenheimer quoted from Hindu scripture: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of
worlds"
3. JFK's favourite poem was Alan Seeger's "I have a rendezvous with death". Seeger died in 1916
4. Whatever the merits of the poem, JFK was no stranger to death. Likewise, he had adopted Lincoln's prayer: "I know there is
a God – and I see a storm coming. If he has a place for me, I believe that I am ready."
Edward, how people can be so easily fooled is an age old question. One hundred years ago they queued up to be slaughtered in the
trenches. It was all so senseless it was beyond belief.
"Over the top lads, for King and Country" (the Black Adder comedy programme really captured this).
I'm not sure what else I can say about the stupidity of the human race.
We are at this point again, and people need to fecking wake-up.
Richard Le Sarc ,
People in the West are brainwashed from birth. They have NO idea that the capitalist system is incompatible with Life on Earth,
that it is a form of cancer, that the USA is the greatest force for Evil in history and that businessmen, politicians, MSM presstitutes
are psychopaths at best, dullards and ignoramuses at best. And the worst are those that deny death in belief in various 'Gods'
who all hate each other and compel them to kill and destroy in his name. The system is collapsing, and that is finally dawning
on the brain-dead 'consumers', who will now proceed to consume one another.
All are brainwashed from birth.
Its not "capitalism" its is a parasitic banking cabals economy .
Its a monopoly you've just always believed as a debt slave its capitalism and you're free.
They are resetting it, those that understand the minds of the manchild.
Good stuff Edward,
Most of the 'plan' has been on these boards for months- the one missing is Whitney Webbs latest which exposes the dumb fucks plan
to close the 'AI Gap with China'.
'THEY' have never let a good crises go to waste to further their agenda and plans.
Another old adage is about not being able to fool all of the people all of the time.
Death and politicians and media narrative control can also lose their grip. It starts by laughing at them. It's started:
THEY will not succeed this time – the narrative is a shattering mirror, that reveals their plans – the BS isn't sticking any
more.
crank ,
Confronting our exaggerated fear of dying is the only way out of this prison.
Thanks for this article Edward.
John Deehan ,
When the education system has been designed to eliminate the use of critical thinking and the purveyors of propaganda control
the vast majority of the MSM, academia plus the creation of a veneer of democracy, it is little wonder so many people have swallowed
this lie.
Doug Stillborn ,
The cabal beleives that the truth is irrelevant and that whatever appears to you as truth is what is true to you and the only truth.
This is false. The truth is not relative. Einstein knew this and said, time is an illusion albeit a persistent one. If you propagate
the idea of atheism and science what you are actually doing is you are relinquishing any responsibility/accountability.
I don't think so Doug . The ideas of " atheism and science " are out there.
But what has happened is that many who call themselves atheists worship science( but not science as knowledge as it originally
meant) so its mostly theories taken a facts, pseudoscience.
Agree though that time is an illusion.
The cabal wants only their narrative( lies as the truth) they want the truth of who we are and that we are co creators in this
world unknown to us .
1. "The US political culture is that 99.99% of Americans will believe literally ANY lie,
no matter how self-evidently stupid, about the rest of the world rather than accepting any
unpleasant truth about the US. "
2. "Eventually, and inevitably, this strategic PSYOP upped the ante and FOXnews
(logically) aired this true masterpiece: "Sen. Hawley: Let coronavirus victims sue Chinese
Communist Party". Truly, this is brilliant. "I lost my job, let the evil Chinese commies pay
me back" is music to the ears of most Americans."
This is what Anglo-Zionist religious/political culture produces. And it is not restricted
to jingoistic blaming of the peoples of other nations; it also features blaming those who are
citizens of the nation but are more outsiders to the WASP Elites that the group doing the
blaming. That pattern keeps the non-Elites from ever seeing that their enemy is the
national/imperial Elite they serve.
For example, the horrors the Brit WASP Elites and their system inflicted on Lancashire
factory workers would have made any real life Simon Legree giddy at the possibilities. And
those abused masses could be counted on at every turn to retard their own demands any time
the Elites could turn the conversation to how the Irish or Highlanders would come in and take
their jobs for even less and ruin their delightful communities. Or how the evil empires on
the Continent were causing trouble and to save lives of British soldiers the factory workers
must be reasonable.
Orwellian fiction is steeped deeply in the actual ways that WASP Empire operates to grind
its own citizens and ue them as mindless pawns to make Anglo-Zionist Elites ever richer, ever
more entrenched in power.
1984 and Animal Farm get the attention, but Homage to Catalonia - Orwell's non-fiction on
the Spanish Civil War - might be his best. Wow, did he hate reporters: "It was the first time
that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies -- unless one counts
journalists..."
Alex Berenson 4:34 PM - 18 Apr 2020
2/ And this: "I do not suppose I should exaggerate if I said that nine-tenths of it is
untruthful. Nearly all the newspaper accounts published at the time were manufactured by
journalists at a distance, and were not only inaccurate in their facts but intentionally
misleading..."
Alex Berenson 4:37 PM - 18 Apr 2020
3/ I guess one might say that the groupthink and lies Orwell saw in Spain *informed* his
writing in 1984 - which was published in 1949, 11 years after Homage to Catalonia. Apropos of
nothing, of course.
Okay, I'll be adding this book to my list of books to read after I graduate and take my
big exam.
B Ekdahl 5:06 PM - 18 Apr 2020
The part of that book that I've thought of
with hope during this chillling time is how Orwell noted that the Spanish were incompetent
even with fascism. Let's hope that US is even more incompetent.
R.R. Reno 5:30 PM - 18 Apr 2020
I don't think we can underestimate how many reporters have been so panicked that only a
few are outside their homes in New York reporting on what's actually happening.
1984 and Animal Farm get the attention, but Homage to Catalonia - Orwell's non-fiction on
the Spanish Civil War - might be his best. Wow, did he hate reporters: "It was the first time
that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies--unless one counts
journalists..."
Will 6:27 PM - 18 Apr 2020
If you haven't heard of Udo Ulfkotte's story, you should check it out: https://www. paulcraigroberts.org/2019/10/14/jou
rnalists-are-prostitutes/ His initiation into big time media was watching fellow
reporters pour gasoline on burnt up tanks & film it, replete w/ soldier actors, like war
was happening. Audio tracks added later.
"... This is the problem with the Democrats. You might be interested in class issues, and economic equality, and not at all interested in wokeness. But what you're going to get is wokeness, because that is what the power-holding class in the Democratic Party really cares about. As James Lindsay, the left-liberal professor who does heroic work fighting wokeness, told me in our recent interview: ..."
"... Of course [Social Justice Warriors] going to find ways to use this crisis to their advantage. They go around inventing problems or dramatically exaggerating or misinterpreting small problems to push their agenda; why wouldn't they do the same in a situation where there's so much chaos and thus so much going wrong. My experience so far is that people are really underestimating how much of this there will be and how much of it will be institutionalized while we're busy doing other things like tending to the sick and dying and trying not to lose our livelihoods and/or join them ourselves. ..."
"... It's very important to understand that "Critical Social Justice" isn't just activism and some academic theories about things. It's a way of thinking about the world, and that way is rooted in critical theory as it has been applied mostly to identity groups and identity politics ..."
Might Orwell's sensitive nose have detected a whiff of cant anywhere on the contemporary left? I suspect he would have cast
a baleful eye on identity politics. He would, I think, be dubious about "diversity." Why do every college and corporation in America
have a fleet of "diversity" officers? What is gained by ensuring -- at enormous expense -- that every student or employee is proud
of his/her culture and that every other student or employee respects it? According to Walter Benn Michaels in The Trouble with
Diversity, what is gained is the avoidance of class conflict. "The commitment to diversity is at best a distraction and at worst
an essentially reactionary position . We would much rather celebrate cultural diversity than seek to establish economic equality."
Orwell was moderately obsessed with class. He would probably have noted that the explosive growth of inequality in the United
States over the past four decades has closely paralleled the explosive growth of the diversity industry, and would have drawn
some conclusions. He might have asked: If there were two societies with the same Gini coefficient, but in one of them, the proportion
of billionaires by race and gender matched that of the general population, would that society be morally better than the other?
Or: If the ratio of CEO to median employee earnings was the same in two societies, but in one of them the proportion of CEOs by
race and gender matched that of the general population, would that society be morally better than the other? I'm pretty sure that
most diversity bureaucrats would answer "yes" to both questions, and that Orwell would have answered "no."
Orwell was fearless, so a tribute to him shouldn't pull any punches. I think he would suggest that there was something irrational
about the way we enforce our most sensitive taboo: the N-word. From the wholesale banning of Huckleberry Finn to the many times
teachers and civil servants have been censured, and in one case fired, for using the word "niggardly" (which has no etymological
relation to the N-word) to the resignation under pressure recently of a Cambridge, Massachusetts, school committeewoman for using
the N-word in a discussion of a proposed high-school course about the N-word, we have often made fools of ourselves and done disadvantaged
African Americans no good. As the school superintendent summarized the Cambridge case: the committeewoman "made a point about
racist language and used the full N-word instead of the common substitute, 'N-word.' Although said in the context of a classroom
discussion, and not directed to any student or adult present, the full pronunciation of the word was upsetting to a number of
students and adults who were present or who have since heard about the incident." No one, however, as far as I am aware, has publicly
expressed hurt feelings over the fact that the average net worth of African Americans in the Boston area is $8. (Eight, no zeros.)
As Benn Michaels observes: "As long as the left continues to worry about [respect], the right won't have to worry about inequality."
I wrote earlier today about actually existing conservatism being more of a "folk libertarianism" than anything resembling philosophical
conservatism. But what about actually existing liberalism?
The surprising triumph of Joe Biden, the most normie Democrat in America, tells us something about actually existing liberalism.
Illiberal progressivism dominates in academia, the media, and in corporate America's human resources departments. A reader sends
in this abstract from a paper published by a Penn professor at the Ivy League university's Wharton School of Business (Trump's alma
mater!) in which she argues that the state should
forbid identity-based discrimination but permit refusals of service for projects that foster hate toward protected groups,
even where the hate-based project is intimately linked to a protected characteristic (as with religious groups that mandate white
supremacy). Far from perpetuating discrimination, these refusals instead promote anti-discrimination norms, and they help realize
the vision of the morally inflected marketplace that the Article defends.
You could say that Biden's (not yet assured) victory in the Democratic primaries shows that actually existing liberalism is much
less interested in wokeness than in bread-and-butter issues. After all, the more self-consciously woke candidates in the Democratic
race didn't get anywhere. I would like to read it that way. But would Biden actually stand up to any wokeness? After all, this is
the man who tweeted:
Let's be clear: Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time. There is no room for compromise when it comes to
basic human rights.
This is the problem with the Democrats. You might be interested in class issues, and economic equality, and not at all interested
in wokeness. But what you're going to get is wokeness, because that is what the power-holding class in the Democratic Party really
cares about. As James Lindsay, the left-liberal professor who does heroic work fighting wokeness, told me
in our recent interview:
Of course [Social Justice Warriors] going to find ways to use this crisis to their advantage. They go around inventing
problems or dramatically exaggerating or misinterpreting small problems to push their agenda; why wouldn't they do the same in
a situation where there's so much chaos and thus so much going wrong. My experience so far is that people are really underestimating
how much of this there will be and how much of it will be institutionalized while we're busy doing other things like tending to
the sick and dying and trying not to lose our livelihoods and/or join them ourselves.
It's very important to understand that "Critical Social Justice" isn't just activism and some academic theories about things.
It's a way of thinking about the world, and that way is rooted in critical theory as it has been applied mostly to identity groups
and identity politics. Thus, not only do they think about almost nothing except ways that "systemic power" and "dominant
groups" are creating all the problems around us, they've more or less forgotten how to think about problems in any other way.
The underlying assumption of their Theory–and that's intentionally capitalized because it means a very specific thing–is that
the very fabric of society is built out of unjust systemic power dynamics, and it is their job (as "critical theorists") to find
those, "make them visible," and then to move on to doing it with the next thing, ideally while teaching other people to do it
too. This crisis will be full of opportunities to do that, and they will do it relentlessly. So, it's not so much a matter of
them "finding a way" to use this crisis to their advantage as it is that they don't really do anything else.
To be honest, I don't have a lot of confidence in predictions about what valence wokeness (or right-wing culture war
themes) will have in this fall's election, given the economic destruction upon us now. I do have confidence, though, that if the
left gets into power, this professional class of woke activists will march triumphantly through the institutions of government,
and implement their identity-politics utopianism. Do I think that most Democratic voters do, or would, favor that? No, probably
not. I imagine they would be voting Democratic primarily to oust Trump, and secondarily because they are more interested in
income inequality...
If Orwell were alive today and writing with his superlative critical pen about them, he would struggle
to find publication in one of our major liberal journals.
UPDATE: Just now:
I'm sure Critical Social Justice isn't quietly reorganizing things that might matter because of the pandemic Or so I keep being
told. https://t.co/LEzvjqbu2B
-- James Lindsay, staying home (@ConceptualJames)
March 31, 2020
Rod Dreher is a senior editor at The American Conservative . He has written and edited for the New York Post , The Dallas
Morning News , National Review , the South Florida Sun-Sentinel , the Washington Times , and the Baton Rouge Advocate . Rod's commentary
has been published in The Wall Street Journal , Commentary , the Weekly Standard , Beliefnet, and Real Simple, among other publications,
and he has appeared on NPR, ABC News, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and the BBC. He lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with his wife Julie
and their three children. He has also written four books, The Little Way of Ruthie Leming , Crunchy Cons , How Dante Can Save Your
Life , and The Benedict Option
We is set in the future. D-503, a spacecraft engineer, lives in the One State,[3] an urban nation constructed almost entirely of
glass, which assists mass surveillance. The structure of the state is Panopticon-like, and life is scientifically managed F. W.
Taylor-style. People march in step with each other and are uniformed. There is no way of referring to people except by their given
numbers. The society is run strictly by logic or reason as the primary justification for the laws or the construct of the
society.[4][5] The individual's behaviour is based on logic by way of formulas and equations outlined by the One State.[6]
Francis Lee ,
Sounds very much like Yevgeny Zamyatin – We . But we never thought it would
happen!
In the case of "Brave New World", the establishment knows how to cure pretty much any
conventional disease. Then if you're in approved society you die around age 60 because of
everything that's kept you alive and looking like 40.
I just read the book last month for the first time in 30+ years. It does belong on that
diagram. And "1984" doesn't either, since it really doesn't deal with anything like
infectious diseases--reread that about 2 years ago.
I've not read the other 2 outer books ever, but the movie of "Fahrenheit 451", which I just
watched and Bradbury certainly had a hand in writing, has nothing to do with infectious
disease.
There might be something in Camus' "The Plague" though. Haven't read that since the
1980s.
There aren't food shortages so not sure about the "Soylent Green" reference, yet at least.
"Long's Run" is about killing people off at age 35, which I guess overlaps with "kill 80% of
the poor workers", something the likes of Charles Koch certainly supports. So indirectly
there could be a "Logan's Run" connection.
Gattica is just about favored people with the right genes, so an update of "Brave New
World", without the highly literate "savage" as the main character.
I don't see how "The Matrix" relates, that's more about the material world's completeness
being an illusion.
"Clockwork Orange?" A thug suppressed with mind control?
Haven't read "Lord of the Flies", but don't the kids worship a god of the island, and
justify the horrors they commit based on that conception of god or a god?
From Albert Camus's The Plague , which is
once again on my nightstand: "There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always
plagues and wars take people equally by surprise."
+ We are witnessing what happens to a country (this one) that faces a pandemic after it has
privatized almost every aspect of its public social welfare and health systems & gutted the
teaching of science in public schools so thoroughly that most people can't even understand
what's coming at them
+ Even as we are being told to distance ourselves from each other, we need more solidarity
now than ever before, because the System we are living under has failed, failed to offer even a
minimum level of protection to those most vulnerable, just as we all knew it would fail, in
precisely the ways it was meant to fail.
+ Leave it to
Mike Davis , who wrote
a terrifying book a
few years ago on Avian Flu, to give us a stark forecast for what we're up against: "There is,
however, more reliable data on the virus's impact on certain groups in a few countries. It is
very scary. Italy, for example, reports a staggering 23 per cent death rate among those over
65; in Britain the figure is now 18 per cent. The 'corona flu' that Trump waves off is an
unprecedented danger to geriatric populations, with a potential death toll in the
millions."
+ Six months from now, 75% of Americans will have a "pre-existing condition." The other 25%
will probably be composting
+ When CDC Director Dr. Redfield was asked at a congressional hearing on Thursday morning
who's in charge of making sure coronavirus tests can be administered, he hesitated and then
turned to Dr. Fauci, who said, "My colleague is looking at me to answer that "
+ Do you REALLY want to give Trump those extreme powers, Bernie?
We are dealing with a national emergency and the president should declare one now.
+ All of the financial elites who were willing to swallow Trump's nativism, managerial
incompetence and anti-science lunacies in exchange for tax cuts, gutted regulations and a bull
market are getting their just desserts but did they have to drag the rest of us down with
them?
I tried reading that about 20 years ago, but it never engaged me. I'll have to give it
another try.
Currently, I'm reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon for the third time. One of his
best, in my opinion. But, I'd also recommend the System of the World trilogy. Slower-paced,
but also tremendously satisfying.
Stay away from Stephenson's latest, Fall, or Dodge in Hell . I've loved everything
else I've read by him, but this last one was truly execrable. I slogged through the whole
thing, thinking there must be some point to it all, and there never was.
Stephenson can be incredibly hit or miss. I loved Anathem, Cryptonomicon, Zodiac, and
Diamond Age, thought that anything Stephenson touched: cyberpunk, alt-history, sprawling
world building, etc was pure gold. Then I read Reamde What a waste of a thousand pages.
Confederacy is great, and I say that as a former New Orleanian . . .
If you like humor around absurd characters and their doings, I would recommend Charles
Portis' works, all are good. He's best known for True Grit , but additionally both
Dog of the South, Masters of Atlantis are also outstanding. The latter is a lot of fun
with secret societies, Theosophy & Masonry, that kind of social stew.
A bit more gentle in his absurdity than the over-the-top characters in Confederacy, but
lots of fun.
I picked up Anathem at random several years ago and it gave me a Nerdwoody.
I love constructed universes(LOTR, Dune) but that one was so subtle it was almost implied
that there's all this s^^t going on.
you had to grow into it.
Given EITC, I just had a haul:
Harvey's "Neoliberalism", Mr Hudson's "Forgive them ", Ruskin's" Unto this Last"(currently
involved), Frank's"Listen Liberal"(similarly involved), and EP Thompson's "The Making of the
English Working Class" this latter of which i've wanted to read for a long while.
All of them due to suggestions or mentions on NC in the last couple of years.
the first two and the last will hafta wait till all i'm doing is harvesting.
EITC + Spring Break + General Spingtime = Sudden Flurry of Activity.
2 sheds in progress sheep/goat and woodshed gigantic telephone poles set, ready for me to
wander by and frame it in then another Barnraising Day(ribs, tater salad, beer, etc) to put
the r-panel up(already pained red with yellow stripes(everything else is blue and green and
purple) then the next however long for me to finish it up.
and i've planted more this year than i have in 20.
including around 80 black gallon+ pots with seeds/acorns i've picked up all over, or rooted
cuttings of everything else i've come across.
and tons of manure.
so, only Light Reading for now.
for i am not worth shootin'.
A Confederacy of Dunces spoke to me! Funniest book I have ever read. And like you, I've
re-read several times. Just seeing the title makes me laugh. :-)
Anatomy of a Campaign: The British Fiasco in Norway, 1940 – John Kiszely
The British underfunded their military until too late. Which would have been o.k. up to a
point, except they seemed to have no realization at this point how disparate the Nazi German
capabilities were compared to their own.
When We Were Vikings – Andrew David MacDonald
A very nice coming of age tail of an adult mentally challenged young woman who is into
Vikings and dealing with a family crisis.
#Library-of-Psychohistory,_for_times_of_plague_and_famine (TM)____________
Anabasis by Xenophon
Muqaddimmah: an Introduction to History by ibn Khaldun
Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time by Johanna Nichols
Hamlet's Mill by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend
The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe by Marija Gimbutas
Models of Discovery by Herbert Simon
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
Unifying the Mind by David Danks
Targeted Learning in Data Science: Causal Inference for Complex Longitudinal Studies by Mark
Vanderlaan and Sherri Rose
Vladimir Propp and the Study of Structure in Hebrew Biblical Narrative by Pamela J. Milne
Washington Babylon by Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silverstein
Algernon Blackwood Anthony Hope Anthony Trollope Anton Chekhov Arthur Conan Doyle Arthur
Quiller-Couch Baroness Orczy Benjamin Disraeli Charles Dickens Dinah Craik E. Phillips
Oppenheim Edith Wharton Elizabeth Gaskell Eugene Sue F. Marion Crawford G.A. Henty G.K.
Chesterton George Gissing George Meredith Gertrude Atherton H. Rider Haggard H.G. Wells
Hamlin
Garland Henry James Honore de Balzac etc
Counterintuitive as it may sound, people fearing the coronavirus are
buying up copies
of Albert Camus'
The Plague
, Stephen King's
The Stand
, and Dean Koontz's
The Eyes
of Darkness
. If you're
one of those
who finds consuming pandemic stories to be palliative for your anxiety, I recommend the addition of
one of the only pieces
of American
fiction about the 1918–19 flu pandemic that was written by a survivor: Katherine Anne Porter's
Pale Horse, Pale Rider
. This short novel,
published in 1939, is a story of two doomed lovers caught up in the gears of world war and a deadly virus; somehow, it manages
to be romantic and bitter, all at once.
The story is semi-autobiographical. Porter
was 28
during the 1918–19
pandemic and working for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. She was dating a young soldier, who was readying for deployment
overseas. When she fell sick, he nursed her at her boarding house, until her editor finally pulled strings to get her admitted
to a hospital. That hospital was so overcrowded that Porter was left on a gurney in a hallway for nine days, running a fever
of 105. When she recovered, she found out that the soldier had died of the flu.
Pale Horse, Pale Rider
gives the
bones of this experience to its protagonist, Miranda Gay.
Miranda bristles at jingoistic homefront culture, which Porter depicts as a mind virus that rivals the flu. A couple of
unctuous war bond salesmen try to guilt Miranda into purchasing a bond she cannot afford; she and the other female reporter at
her paper worry that they will lose their jobs if they can't scrape together the money to buy one. The novel shows how the
expectation of support for the war colors everyone's daily interactions. Miranda describes how everyone reacts in a particular
way when they hear the words "the war": "It was habitual, automatic, to give that solemn, mystically uplifted grin when you
spoke the words or heard them spoken."
The war and the flu mingle together as threats to a good thing that's happening in Miranda's life. In this fictionalization of
Porter's experience, the soldier Miranda is in love with is named Adam, and he's from Texas. They've been dating about 10
days, but they both feel like this is something real. They've spent those 10 days in the frenzy of early romance: dancing to
jazz, going to see plays she needs to write about for the paper, poking around geological museums, skipping out of town to
take hikes. They both know that their mutual affection will be short-lived, since he'll be going to France soon. What they
don't know is that it will be the virus that gets them first.
While Miranda admits to herself how much she would love him if he weren't bound for the war, between them, they keep
everything light by policy; the flu is no exception. "It seems to be a plague, something out of the Middle Ages," Miranda says
to Adam, who is about to be sent back to training, about the sickness. "Did you ever see so many funerals, ever?" "Never did,"
he replies. "Well, let's be strong minded and not have any of it. I've got four days more straight from the blue and not a
blade of grass must grow under our feet." With that, they make plans to go dancing.
Slowly, the flu makes its presence known in her body, even as her mind continues to dwell on the war. On the night she
collapses from the sickness she's been feeling inklings of for days, Adam and Miranda go to a play together, so she can review
it. It's a boring play, but before the third act, a fundraiser comes onstage to implore people to buy war bonds. It's this
endless speech, which hits all the patriotic high notes, that catalyzes Miranda's illness, making her head ache and spin.
At a restaurant after the play, she passes out; when she comes to, Adam is nursing her in her boardinghouse room. That's the
last time she has with him. After she's taken to the hospital and suffers through days of pain and fever dreams, Miranda wakes
up, finds out he's dead, and feels profoundly alienated from her body and her life. "Can this be my face?" Miranda asks when
she looks in the mirror after finally regaining consciousness. "Are these my own hands?" she asks a nurse, "holding them up to
show the yellow tint like melted wax glimmering between the closed fingers."
The book's small story of one person's tragedy reminds us that illness is a personal trauma, and a pandemic is a million
personal traumas in one. Porter
said of the flu pandemic in an
interview
in 1963: "It simply divided my life, cut across it like that. So that everything before that was just getting ready, and after
that I was in some strange way altered."
Pale Horse, Pale Rider
isn't a book about secretly released bioweapons or an
epic struggle between good and evil or a metaphor about Nazism; it's just a story about people coming to terms with their own
mortality. "The body is a curious monster, no place to live in, how could anyone feel at home there?" Miranda asks. How,
indeed?
The "social" is "social media" is in contrast to "professional" or "business" or
"commercial" media, i.e. the MSM and other commercial media.
I understand "social media" literally in the Orwellian sense, it is "social" media just like
war is peace. The true meaning is "asocial media" which prevents real interaction, and under
complete control by big brother, you can become a non-person at any moment.
Not recommended for anybody with a college education, especially in STEM. The author's writing is entertaining, but that's the
only positive feature of the book. All-in-all this is a collection of cyber-rumors. Thus one star.
The content is simply yet another "Russians under each bed" fearmongering transposed into cyberspace. The magic abbreviation GRU
sells such sensationalist nonsense really well. What is funny is that the organization referred as GRU does not exist under this
name since I think 1991; after the dissolution of the USSR it was renamed GU (Wikipedia GRU_(G.U.)), but I heard that now Russians
in view of the popularity of the name in the West plan to restore the original name ;-).
So much for the non-technical competence of the author in this area. The guy clearly can't shoot straight and belongs to the
category of journalists whose news coverage is considered to be inappropriately influenced by business interests, political motives,
and trumpeted by the corporate media. There is an appropriate slang name for this category; you can Google it.
In a way, the book can serve as a classic example of Russophobia in the narrow area of cybersecurity. He presents little or no
legitimate facts, preferring to retell rumors and using eye-catching phrases like a "dark room with glowing monitors". For example,
"Working on computers whose glowing monitors were the room's only light source, the reverse engineers began by running the
Ukrainians' malware-infected PowerPoint attachment again and again inside a series of virtual machines."
It is absurd to have a dark room to investigate malware ;-)
Techniques of category of journalists include exaggerations of news events, misrepresentation of facts, sensationalism,
scandal-mongering, and . They usually politicized facts and treat them in an unprofessional and/or unethical fashion.
The author is clearly is not a programmer, just a reasonably gifted snake cyber oil seller. He would be better off if he tries to
distill the content of Vault 7 based on Wikileak's information. In this case, I think both source code (archive of malware ) and
descriptions and user manuals are available in the public domain; so with enough tech skills and time in hand one can write a really
fascinating book. But that's too hard for the guy. So he just decided to milk the public by rehashing and spreading unsubstantiated
cyber rumors.
The technical level of the author can be illustrated by the following paragraph
When Robinson finally cracked those layers of obfuscation after a week of trial and error, he was rewarded with a view of the
BlackEnergy samples millions of ones and zeros -- a collection of data that was, at a glance, still entirely meaningless. This was,
after all, the program in its compiled form, translated into machine-readable binary rather than any human-readable programming
language. To understand the binary, Robinson would have to watch it execute step-by-step on his computer, unraveling it in real-time with a common reverse-engineering tool called IDA Pro that translated the
function of its commands into code as they ran. "It's almost like you're trying to determine what someone might look like solely by
looking at their DNA," Robinson said. "And the god that created that person
was trying to make the process as hard as possible."
So trivial step-by-step tracing of the code using a non-standard (more suitable for the specific purpose) binary debugger (IDA) is
in the author's opinion close to decoding DNA. Nice try but no cigar ;-) .
Actually, the debugger does not necessarily process machine binary code. It can be some VM code like Java VM. For example, parts of
Flame malware (2012) were written in LUA. Along with Stuxnet this was another groundbreaking malware, which unfortunately was
omitted by the author.
Similar incompetent techno-blabbing fills the rest of the book.
Unless this is a pre-paid part of a disinformation campaign by usual suspects, the book is really weak and should be avoided at
prices above one dollar plus shipping. But it is OK effort, if we view it as a part of the disinformation campaign and the attempt
to revive McCarthyism.
Ukrainian part of his story fully correlates with the State Department talking points, and as such, it is stupid to pay money for
it. All other Russophobia based cyber-entertainment and fearmongering is available for free, including multiple good quality videos
on YouTube (look for Crowdstrike :-)
This propaganda honcho was too lazy even to collect relevant information about the Stuxnet -- the groundbreaking worm, which really
opened a new changer in cyberwafare. It is covered in just a dozen pages (96-109) -- less then the length is less of a free good
quality magazine article on this important subject (for example, from Mark Russinovich).
But on the level of qualification of the author all worms looks the same :-) In reality this was a real, very sophisticated act of
cyberwafare, not some Ukrainian hallucinations.
I fully agree with the assessment of "val s golovskoy" (the only other one star reviewer so far):
1.0 out of 5 stars Readers: do not waste your time. December 30, 2019
Tones of rumors, zero facts. The book is following the fashionable trend to dump everything happens in America/UK to the Kremlin.
Easy and comfortable but far from reality.
The author [is] full of fears and see enemy's computers even under his bed. This book creating another legend: how Russian hackers
tried (but did not) to crash Ukrainian system.
Absolutely false and extremely boring. Low intellectual level - do not waste your time.
Here is the contents of the book:
313 - In 2010, Michael Hayden, the former director of the NSA and CIA, made a darkly prescient point in a keynote at the Black
Hat security conference in Las Vegas, speaking to a crowd of programmers, security engineers, and hackers. "You guys made the
cyber domain look like the north German plain. Then you bitch and moan when you get invaded," he said. "On the Internet, we arc
all Poland. We all get invaded on the Web. The inherent geography of this domain is that everything plays to the offense."
317- In an era marked by those in positions of power telling shameless, blatantly self-promotional lies, that sort of
selfless truth telling is more admirable and important than ever.
Working on computers whose glowing monitors were the room's only
light source, the reverse engineers began by running the Ukrainians'
malware-infected PowerPoint attachment again and again inside a
scries of virtual machines -- ephemeral simulations of a computer
housed within a real, physical one, each one of them as scaled oft
from the rest of the computer as the black room was from the rest
of the iSight offices.
In those sealed containers, the code could be studied like a scor-
pion under an aquarium's glass. They'd allow it to infect its virtual
victims repeatedly, as the reverse engineers spun up simulations of
different digital machines, running varied versions of Windows and
Microsoft Office, to study the dimensions and flexibility of the attack.
When they'd determined that the code could extract itself from the
PowerPoint file and gain full control of even the latest, fully patched
versions of the software, they had their confirmation: It was indeed
a zero day, as rare and powerful as the Ukrainians and Hultquist
had suspected. By late in the evening -- a passage of time that went
almost entirely unmarked within their work space -- they'd produced
a detailed report to share with Microsoft and their customers and
coded their own version of it, a proof-of-concept rewrite that dem-
onstrated its attack, like a pathogen in a test tube.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Readers: do not waste your time
December 30, 2019
Format: Hardcover
Tones of rumors, zero facts. The book is
following the fashionable trend to dump everything happens in America/UK to the Kremlin. Easy and comfortable but far from
reality. The author full of fears and see enemy's computers even under his bed. This book creating another legend: how Russian
hackers tried (but did not) to crash Ukrainian system. Absolutely false and extremely boring. Low intellectual level- do not
waste your time.
"... "When the party of activist government, faced with an epic crisis, will not use government's extensive powers to reverse the economic disorders and heal deepening social deterioration, then it must be the end of the line for the governing ideology inherited from Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson." ..."
"... Bill's frustration with what he referred to as "the rightward-drifting Democrats" ran deep. While his books often explored economic themes -- with particular brilliance in One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism (1997) and Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country (1987) -- he was at his finest when he wrote about the awful intersection of money and politics, in books such as Who Will Tell the People? The Betrayal of American Democracy (1992). ..."
"... Bill believed Wall Street money was corrupting American politics in general, and the Democratic Party in particular. Decades ago, during the Reagan interregnum, he warned that if the Democrats did not renew the robust commitment to economic justice that characterized FDR's tenure at its best, then surely right-wing populists would seize the opening. As always, whether he was writing for The Washington Post , Rolling Stone or The Nation (where he served as the ablest of all national affairs correspondents), Bill was right. ..."
"... The power arrangement resembles a shared monopoly, in which two companies have tacitly ceded territories to each other to avoid costly competition. ..."
"... Furthermore, the permanent hierarchy of both parties is dominated at the top by a network of pricey Washington lawyers and lobbyists who represent business interests and collaborate with one another on lobbying the government -- while pretending to be opponents. These inside players channel their corporate clients' money to the elected politicians. In effect, everyone is on the same side. ..."
I knew Bill as a quick-witted comrade in the press corps of too many campaigns to count, a generous mentor, an ideological compatriot,
and an occasional co-conspirator. He taught me to see politics not as the game that TV pundits discuss but as a high-stakes struggle
for power in which the Democrats foolishly, and then dangerously, yielded far too much ground to increasingly right-wing Republicans.
This son of the Depression era bemoaned the failure of the Democratic Party to make a New Deal–style response to the financial meltdown
of 2008,
I knew Bill as a quick-witted comrade in the press corps of too many campaigns to count, a generous mentor, an ideological compatriot,
and an occasional co-conspirator. He taught me to see politics not as the game that TV pundits discuss but as a high-stakes struggle
for power in which the Democrats foolishly, and then dangerously, yielded far too much ground to increasingly right-wing Republicans.
This son of the Depression era bemoaned the failure of the Democratic Party to make a New Deal–style response to the financial
meltdown of 2008, This son of the Depression era bemoaned the failure of the Democratic Party to make a New Deal–style response to
the financial meltdown of 2008, explaining after
the devastating Republican victories of 2010 , "When the party of activist government, faced with an epic crisis, will not use
government's extensive powers to reverse the economic disorders and heal deepening social deterioration, then it must be the end
of the line for the governing ideology inherited from Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson."
And, anticipating the rise of Donald Trump, he counseled that the void left by Democrats who pulled their punches would be filled
by Republicans who would not hesitate to practice the crudest divide-and-conquer politics. And, anticipating the rise of Donald Trump,
he counseled that the void left by Democrats who pulled their punches would be filled by Republicans who would not hesitate to practice
the crudest divide-and-conquer politics.
Bill's frustration with what he referred to as "the rightward-drifting Democrats" ran deep. While his books often explored economic
themes -- with particular brilliance in One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism (1997) and Secrets
of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country (1987) -- he was at his finest when he wrote about the awful intersection
of money and politics, in books such as Who Will Tell the People? The Betrayal of American Democracy (1992).
Bill believed Wall Street money was corrupting American politics in general, and the Democratic Party in particular. Decades
ago, during the Reagan interregnum, he warned that if the Democrats did not renew the robust commitment to economic justice that
characterized FDR's tenure at its best, then surely right-wing populists would seize the opening. As always, whether he was writing
for The Washington Post , Rolling Stone or The Nation (where he served as the ablest of all national affairs
correspondents), Bill was right.
More than 30 years ago, he recognized that "the two-party rivalry is not nearly as significant as it's made to appear" and
counseled that
The power arrangement resembles a shared monopoly, in which two companies have tacitly ceded territories to each other to avoid
costly competition.
Furthermore, the permanent hierarchy of both parties is dominated at the top by a network of pricey Washington lawyers and
lobbyists who represent business interests and collaborate with one another on lobbying the government -- while pretending to
be opponents. These inside players channel their corporate clients' money to the elected politicians. In effect, everyone is on
the same side.
The parties have begun to delineate themselves a bit more in recent years. But not sufficiently, as Bill explained in scorchingly
honest articles for The Nation . He spoke inconvenient truths about the roots of our current politics, especially when he
explained
that "the Democratic Party's crude betrayal of the working class was carried out by Bill Clinton and Al Gore when those 'New Democrats'
won power in 1992. The Clinton-Gore administration swiftly enacted NAFTA, with Republican votes, sealing the deal with Republican
policy-makers and selling out the remnants of organized labor." Bill recognized the necessity of understanding this history in order
to explain the rise of Trump and Trumpism.
Above all, Bill argued that for Democrats to seize the high ground, morally and electorally, they had to stop being a "managerial
party" and reacquaint themselves with the message FDR delivered during an epically successful 1936 reelection run. That was the year
when Roosevelt declared that
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace -- business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism,
sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government
by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous
in their hate for me -- and I welcome their hatred.
I don't know if Bill had that FDR speech memorized. But he carried its spirit in his heart and soul. And he taught the rest of
us to do the same. He appreciated the history, as all great journalists do. But there was a point to its recollection. He wanted
people to think about how a genuine two-party system might work in the 21st century.
The better part of two decades ago, Bill pointed to the way out when he wrote, for The Nation , on Republican scheming
to roll back the economic and social advances initiated by progressives during the 20th century. It was sound advice then. It is
sounder advice now, as a great wrestling for the soul of the Democratic Party plays out in the fight for the 2020 nomination to take
on Trump.
"Most elected Democrats, I think, now see their role as managerial rather than big reform, and fear that even talking about ideology
will stick them with the right's demon label: 'liberal,'" he suggested. But,
he continued,
If a new understanding of progressive purpose does get formed, one that connects to social reality and describes a more promising
future, the vision will not originate in Washington but among those who see realities up close and are struggling now to change
things on the ground. We are a very wealthy (and brutally powerful) nation, so why do people experience so much stress and confinement
in their lives, a sense of loss and failure? The answers, I suggest, will lead to a new formulation of what progressives want.
The first place to inquire is not the failures of government but the malformed power relationships of American capitalism --
the terms of employment that reduce many workers to powerless digits, the closely held decisions of finance capital that shape
our society, the waste and destruction embedded in our system of mass consumption and production. The goal is, like the right's,
to create greater self-fulfillment but as broadly as possible. Self-reliance and individualism can be made meaningful for all
only by first reviving the power of collective action.
My own conviction is that a lot of Americans are ready to take up these questions and many others. Some are actually old questions
-- issues of power that were not resolved in the great reform eras of the past. They await a new generation bold enough to ask
if our prosperous society is really as free and satisfied as it claims to be. When conscientious people find ideas and remedies
that resonate with the real experiences of Americans, then they will have their vision, and perhaps the true answer to the right
wing.
This was how Bill Greider told the people of the politics that must be. He wrote truthfully, boldly, consistently, without fear
or favor, and without the empty partisanships of these awkward times. He was our North Star.
Totalitarian ideologies live by lies and contradiction. For example, the slave-state of
North Korea , ruled by
a hereditary dictatorship, proclaims itself a Democratic People's Republic when it is neither
democratic, popular, nor a republic.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four , Orwell wrote of how "the names of the
four Ministries by which [the oppressed population is] governed exhibit a sort of impudence in
their deliberate reversal of the facts. The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the
Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with
starvation.
These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary
hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink ."
Defending the death-machine
You could, then, call GCHQ and the NSA part of the Ministry of Morality. While breaking laws
against surveillance and trying to destroy freedom of expression and enquiry, they pretend that
they're caring, ethical organizations who defend the oppressed and want to build a better
world. In fact, of course, GCHQ and the NSA are defending the death-machine of the military-industrial
complex , which has been wrecking nations and slaughtering civilians in
the Middle East (and elsewhere ) for
decades.
Quote: Orwell didn't foresee the celebration of homosexuality by totalitarians, but he did
explain it.
If you read Anthony Burgess' The Wanting Seed he writes about the roles of gays in
dystopia. He also talks about race, two things that Orwell and Huxley didn't. The Wanting
Seed is just as important in the world of dystopia as Brave New World or 1984.
one way George Orwell got the future completely wrong
That assumes he was writing about the future. He was mocking the Soviet "justice" system
in the recent past. The man was a satirist, after all. How did Stalin's men treat sexual
deviation?
1) The iniquities of the members of one skyfairy cult are not evidence for the virtues of
another such organisation and never will be.
2) It seems likely to me that homosexuality is a feature of overpopulation and may be a
natural population control mechanism. Experiments have shown that rats kept in overcrowded
conditions exhibit homosexual tendencies and also become more violent towards other rats. I
doubt that it is purely a coincidence that homosexuality first became notable round about the
time that humans started living in cities.
Other species have means of controlling their
populations, rabbits for example can reabsorb their embryos if the population count is too
high, seals can freeze the development of their foetuses etc.
I see no rational purpose in demonising homosexuals and I am certainly not going to let the purveyors of ancient
superstitious claptrap do my thinking for me. Cue howls of outrage from both skyfairy
cultists and from queers (if they are happy to use the word I don't see why I shouldn't)
3) It seems to me that the Zionist bankers have essentially bankrupted the western world
in an attempt to bring the rest of the world under their control, they have failed. They are
now attempting to mobilise any and all sections of the population that identify as minorities
as allies against the majorities in those countries, importing as many more as they can get
away with. What sense does it make to reinforce their narrative that it is heterosexual
whites v everyone else? because that is exactly what some people are doing. The Zionists are
making their following as broad as possible while attempting to narrow ours, why play into
their hands? Opposition to immigration for example does not have to be presented as a racial
issue, many people here in the UK were opposed to mass immigration from eastern Europe on
purely economic grounds, Poles and Lithuanians are not a different race and hardly even a
different culture. Do you really think that Blacks and Latinos that have been in the US for
generations are uniformly delighted about a new influx of cheap labour? Do you really believe
that Muslims are the natural allies of Jews or of homosexuals? If you actually put some
thought into the struggle rather than relying on superstitious claptrap and bigotry you might
be able to start pushing back.
So, Western civilization is going to collapse because of a few fairies & fag
hags?
Yes, it looks as if it will collapse. Not because the fairies and fag hags are
all-powerful, but because we have had it so good & easy for so long that we've gotten
weaker than any determined, focused fairy or hag.
Leftism in general, which I characterize as a mass adoption of a "mental map" (the gross
oversimplification of infinite reality people use to navigate their lives) highly estranged
from underlying reality, is Nature's "suicide switch" for an organism that has grossly
overgrown its ecological niche.
Today people believe palpably unreal things, in incredibly large numbers, with incredibly
deep fervor. The poster-child is the belief in the efficacy of magical incantations (statute
legislation) to change Actual Reality. If "we" want to end racism (however we define it in
the Newspeak Dictionary) then we just pass a law and "pow!" it's gone. (When that doesn't
work, we pass another law, and another and another and another, always expecting a different
result.)
Ditto the banking (and monetary) system. Money used to be basically a "receipt" for
actually having something IN HAND to take to the market and engage in trade. This was the
essence of Say's Law, "in order to consume (buy something) you must first produce."
Some clever Machiavellians figured out that if you could "complexify" and obscure the
monetary system enough, you could obtain the legal right to create from thin air the
ability to enter that market and buy something, which stripped to its essence is the crime of
fraud.
Banking has been an open fraud for a very long time, certainly since the era of naked fiat
money was introduced in the 1960's. But as long as everyone went along with the gag, and
especially once Credit Bubble Funny Money started fueling a debt orgy and rationalizing an
asset price mania, everyone thought "we could all get rich."
Today we have vast claims on real wealth (real wealth is productive land, productive plant
& equipment and capital you can hold in your hands, so to speak.) But we have uncountable
claims on each unit of real capital. The Machiavellians think that they will end up holding
title to it all, when the day comes to actually make an honest accounting. I suspect that
they lack the political power to pull that off, but only time will tell.
When this long, insane boom is reconciled, a lot of productive capital will turn out to be
nothing but vaporware and rusting steel. Entire industries arose to cater to
credit-bubble-demand, and when the bubble eventually ceases to inflate, demand in (and the
capital applied to) those industries will collapse. How many hospitals do you need when no
one has the money to pay for their services, and the tax base has burned to the ground?
Simple formula. Liberalism was the defense of the individual against the group.
All one needs to do is a simple substitution. Minorities , environment , animals etc are a
means by witch one can make individuals into the institutionalized oppressor. Even better is
the so called intersectional mini oppressions which make nearly all victims which in turns
makes all guilty. State intervention must increase .Guilty people , as all religions of the
world understand, are easily dominated and controlled.
The power the individual is destroyed by its own momentum.
@Digital Samizdat The Bolsheviks first pushed "free love" – easy divorce, abortion
and homosexuality. There even was serious discussion about whether or not to abolish
marriage. They reversed themselves and by the time WWII broke out, the official culture of
the Soviet Union was more socially conservative than that of the US. Even in the 1980s, the
Commies were tough on gays, lesbians and druggies.
This author is brilliant. He gave a comprehensive yet very compact overview of neoliberalism
the first part of the book. An overview which IMHO is very difficult to match. Here are the key
ideas and periods that he outlined:
== quote ==
This is not an ordinary political moment. Everywhere around us, the old order is collapsing.
The golden age of postwar economic growth is over, replaced by a new Gilded Age of inequality
and stagnation... People once united by common culture and information are now fractured into
social media echo chambers.
The [neo]liberal international order is cracking as nationalism grows in strength and global
institutions decay. The United States' role as a global superpower is challenged by the rising
strength of China and a new era of Russian assertiveness.
Optimists hope that generational and demographic change will restore inexorable progress.
Pessimists interpret the current moment as the decline and fall of democracy.
.. we are currently in the midst of one of these epochal transitions. We live on the edge of
a new era in politics -- the third since the Great Depression and World War II. The first era
is probably best described as liberal.... from the 1940s through the 1970s, a version of
political liberalism provided the paradigm for politics. Charting a path between the state
control of communists and fascists and the laissez-faire market that dominated before the Great
Depression, liberals adopted a form of regulated capitalism. Government set the rules of the
road for the economy, regulated finance, invested to create jobs and spark consumer demand,
policed the bad behavior of businesses, and provided a social safety net for Americans. Big
institutions -- big government, big corporations, big labor -- cooperated to balance the needs
of stakeholders in society. In the United States, it was called New Deal Liberalism. In Europe,
social democracy. There were differences across countries, of course, but the general approach
was similar. ...even the conservatives of the time were liberal. Republican president Dwight
Eisenhower championed the national highway system and warned of the military-industrial
complex. President Richard Nixon said, "I am now a Keynesian in economics." His administration
created the EPA and expanded Social Security by indexing benefits to inflation.
...since the 1980s, we have lived in a second era -- that of neoliberalism. In economic and
social policy, neoliberalism's tenets are simple: deregulation, privatization, liberalization,
and austerity. Under neoliberalism, individuals are on their own and should be responsible for
themselves. Instead of governments, corporations, and unions balancing the interests of all
stakeholders, the primary regulator of social interests should be the marketplace. Neoliberals
opposed unions and unionization, they wanted to pursue vouchers instead of public provision of
services, and they sought to shrink the size and functioning of government, even if it meant a
less effective government. Markets worked like magic, and market logic would be applied to all
aspects of life. Around the world, the neoliberal era came with an aggressive emphasis on
expanding democracy and human rights, even by military force. Expanding trade and commerce came
with little regard for who the winners and losers were -- or what the political fallout might
be. ...It was President Bill Clinton who said that the "era of big government is over" and who
celebrated the legislation deregulating Wall Street.
...With the election of Donald Trump, the neoliberal era has reached its end. While in
control of the House, Senate, and presidency, Republicans neither repealed the Affordable Care
Act nor privatized Social Security and Medicare. Their party is increasingly fractured between
Trumpist conservatives, who are far more nationalist, and the never-Trump old-line
conservatives like Bill Kristol or Jeb Bush. An increasing number of people recognize that
neoliberalism's solutions are unsuited to the challenges of our time.
== end ==
The most valuable part of the book IMHO are two chapters devoted to the collapse of
neoliberalism
The author also proposes a very interesting approach to evaluation of the identity politics
as a political strategy:
== quote ==
To be sure, race, gender, culture, and other aspects of social life have always been important
to politics. But neoliberalism's radical individualism has increasingly raised two interlocking
problems. First, when taken to an extreme, social fracturing into identity groups can be used
to divide people and prevent the creation of a shared civic identity. Self-government requires
uniting through our commonalities and aspiring to achieve a shared future.
When individuals fall back onto clans, tribes, and us-versus-them identities, the political
community gets fragmented. It becomes harder for people to see each other as part of that same
shared future.
Demagogues [more correctly neoliberals] rely on this fracturing to inflame racial,
nationalist, and religious antagonism, which only further fuels the divisions within society.
Neoliberalism's war on "society," by pushing toward the privatization and marketization of
everything, thus indirectly facilitates a retreat into tribalism that further undermines the
preconditions for a free and democratic society.
The second problem is that neoliberals on right and left sometimes use identity as a shield
to protect neoliberal policies. As one commentator has argued, "Without the bedrock of class
politics, identity politics has become an agenda of inclusionary neoliberalism in which
individuals can be accommodated but addressing structural inequalities cannot." What this means
is that some neoliberals hold high the banner of inclusiveness on gender and race and thus
claim to be progressive reformers, but they then turn a blind eye to systemic changes in
politics and the economy.
Critics argue that this is "neoliberal identity politics," and it gives its proponents the
space to perpetuate the policies of deregulation, privatization, liberalization, and
austerity.
Of course, the result is to leave in place political and economic structures that harm the
very groups that inclusionary neoliberals claim to support. The foreign policy adventures of
the neoconservatives and liberal internationalists haven't fared much better than economic
policy or cultural politics. The U.S. and its coalition partners have been bogged down in the
war in Afghanistan for 18 years and counting. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq is a liberal
democracy, nor did the attempt to establish democracy in Iraq lead to a domino effect that
swept the Middle East and reformed its governments for the better. Instead, power in Iraq has
shifted from American occupiers to sectarian militias, to the Iraqi government, to Islamic
State terrorists, and back to the Iraqi government -- and more than 100,000 Iraqis are
dead.
Or take the liberal internationalist 2011 intervention in Libya. The result was not a
peaceful transition to stable democracy but instead civil war and instability, with thousands
dead as the country splintered and portions were overrun by terrorist groups. On the grounds of
democracy promotion, it is hard to say these interventions were a success. And for those
motivated to expand human rights around the world, it is hard to justify these wars as
humanitarian victories -- on the civilian death count alone.
Indeed, the central anchoring assumptions of the American foreign policy establishment have
been proven wrong. Foreign policymakers largely assumed that all good things would go together
-- democracy, markets, and human rights -- and so they thought opening China to trade would
inexorably lead to it becoming a liberal democracy. They were wrong. They thought Russia would
become liberal through swift democratization and privatization. They were wrong.
They thought globalization was inevitable and that ever-expanding trade liberalization was
desirable even if the political system never corrected for trade's winners and losers. They
were wrong. These aren't minor mistakes. And to be clear, Donald Trump had nothing to do with
them. All of these failures were evident prior to the 2016 election.
== end ==
In other words identity politics is, first and foremost, a dirty and shrewd political
strategy developed by the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party (aka "soft neoliberals".)
Along with Neo-McCarthyism it represents a mechanism to compensate for the loss by Clinton
Democrats of their primary voting block: trade union members, who in 2016 "en mass" defected to
Trump.
Initially Clinton calculation was that trade union voters has nowhere to go anyways, and it
was correct for first decade or so of his betrayal. But gradually trade union members and lower
middle class started to leave Dems in droves (Demexit; compare with Brexit) and that where
identity politics was invented to compensate for this loss.
We also can identity politics as a double edge sword, which the second edge being the
political strategy of the "soft neoliberals " directed at discrediting and the suppression of
the rising nationalism.
The author correctly argues that the resurgence of nationalism is the inevitable byproduct
of the dominance of neoliberalism, resurgence which I think is capable to bury neoliberalism as
it lost the popular support (which now is limited to financial oligarchy and high income
professional groups, such as we can find in corporate and military brass, (shrinking) IT
sector, upper strata of academy, upper strata of medical professionals, etc.)
In other words, if you are interested in this topic (as well as the most probable outcome of
2020 elections which would be the second referendum on neoliberalism held in the USA) , please
buy the book; you will never regret this decision ;-)
That means that the structure of the current system isn't just flawed which imply that most
problems are relatively minor and can be fixed by making some tweaks. It is unfixable, because
the "Identity wars" reflect a deep moral contradictions within neoliberal ideology. And they
can't be solved within this framework.
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form or by any means without permission in writing from the Brookings Institution Press.
The Brookings Institution is a private nonprofit organization devoted to research,
education, and publication on important issues of domestic and foreign policy. Its principal
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and emerging policy problems. Interpretations or conclusions in Brookings publications should
be understood to be solely those of the authors.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as
follows:
Hill, Fiona, 1965–
Mr. Putin : operative in the Kremlin / Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy.
pages ; cm. -- (Brookings focus book)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8157-2376-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1952– 2. Presidents -- Russia (Federation) 3. Russia
(Federation) -- Politics and government -- 1991– I. Gaddy, Clifford G. II. Title. III.
Series: Brookings focus books.
THIS BOOK IS THE REVISED and considerably expanded version of the
first edition of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin , which we finished
writing in September 2012 and was published in 2013. The original manuscript was the result of
a long-standing collaboration between Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy as colleagues at the
Brookings Institution, dating to the beginning of Mr. Putin's presidency in 2000. The
background for the authors' research work (individually and jointly) was outlined in the
acknowledgments to the 2013 edition. These acknowledgments also thanked all the colleagues and
contacts who assisted in fleshing out specific ideas and identifying source material.
Fiona Hill researched and wrote the additional material for this second edition, which moves
the narrative frame of the original book from its focus on the Russian domestic scene to the
international arena. Between the launch of the first edition in early 2013 and September 2014,
Fiona Hill collected and analyzed new source material and embarked on a series of international
research trips to conduct supplemental interviews with analysts, policymakers, government
officials, and private sector representatives on the key themes of the book. Some of these
trips were sponsored by external organizations, including the Embassy of the United States in
Berlin and the U.S. consulates in Germany (through the U.S. Department of State's Strategic
Speaker Program); the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (through its official visitors and
speakers program); and the Department of National Defence of Canada (through the National
Defence, Defence Engagement Program). Other trips and interviews were facilitated through
meetings and conferences arranged by partner organizations, including the Aspen Institute,
Chatham House, the Council on the United States and Italy, the Ditchley Foundation, the
European Council on Foreign Relations, the EU Institute for Strategic Studies, the German
Marshall Fund, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the French Institute of International
Relations (IFRI), the Körber Stiftung, the London School of Economics, and the Munich
Security Conference. Participation in numerous Brookings Institution conferences, seminars, and
private meetings in Washington, D.C., and Europe also provided opportunities to engage in
one-on-one or small-group discussions with a range of U.S., European, and Russian officials, as
well as U.S. and international business figures active in Russia.
Other interviews with officials were conducted in Washington, D.C. (as indicated in the
endnotes), with the assistance of the embassies of many foreign countries, including Australia,
Canada, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan,
Moldova, Norway, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, the United
Kingdom, and the Delegation of the European Union.
Clifford Gaddy contributed new material and conclusions from two separate research projects:
on the reform of the Russian military and the evolution of Russia's new military doctrine
(conducted with Michael O'Hanlon), and on the state of the Russian economy (conducted with
Barry Ickes). Some of this material will also be reflected in Clifford Gaddy and Barry Ickes's
forthcoming book: Russia's Addiction. The Political Economy of Resource
Dependence.
The book was written between June and September 2014 with the help and hard work of
Brookings senior research assistant Hannah Thoburn. Hannah was a genuine collaborator on both
editions of the book, carrying out painstaking work on Russian source material and playing an
essential role in all aspects of the manuscript preparation.
Irina Angelescu played a critical role in the final stages of completing the manuscript,
checking sources, editing, and thinking through the organization of concepts and material.
Bilyana Lilly, Jan Malaskowski, and Catherine Trainor also assisted with the identification of
Russian language source material.
Jill Dougherty, Michael O'Hanlon, Robert Otto, and Angela Stent all reviewed the text and
gave invaluable editorial, conceptual, and organizational suggestions for the final manuscript.
Also at Brookings, Andrew Moffatt provided moral support, kept everything on track, and made
sure that time and the necessary funding were carved out so the work could get done. Other
colleagues shared sources and ideas, and offered critiques, including Strobe Talbott, Tim
Boersma, Charley Ebinger, Kai Eide, Michael Doran, Erica Downs, Bruce Jones, Kenneth
Lieberthal, Tanvi Madan, Suzanne Maloney, Ted Piccone, Natan Sachs, Mireya Solis, Harold
Trinkunas, and Thomas Wright.
Colleagues at the Center on the United States and Europe -- Riccardo Alcaro, Pavel Baev,
Carlo Bastasin, Caitlyn Davis, Jutta Falke-Ischinger, Richard Kauzlarich, Kemal Kirişci,
Steven Pifer, and Jeremy Shapiro -- all generously took the time to brainstorm on core
concepts.
Valentina Kalk, Janet Walker, and other colleagues at Brookings Institution Press embraced
the idea of an expanded second edition of the book and assisted the project all along the way.
The Brookings Institution Press also covered the new editorial and production costs for the
book. Independent editor John Felton gave editorial support and suggestions for improving the
final manuscript. Laura Mooney and other colleagues at the Brookings library helped with
difficult sourcing. Gail Chalef and Tina Trenkner pitched in with a range of ideas on outreach
as the new version of the book moved toward completion.
As the second phase of research moved along, several people who had read the first edition
raised important questions about core ideas, flagged articles in the Russian and international
press, suggested individuals for interviews (or offered themselves for interview), and very
generously sent their own and other publications for reference. These included Hannes Adomeit,
Ellen Barry, Samuel Bendett, Lynn Berry, J. D. Bindenagel, Samuel Charap, William Courtney,
Igor Danchenko, Jaba Devdariani, William Drozdiak, John Evans, Florence Fee, Katja Gloger, Paul
Goble, Tomas Gomart, Charles Grant, Zuhra Halimova, Michael Haltzel, Andrej Heinke, Marc Hujer,
Shinji Hyodo, Shoichi Ito, Akihiro Iwashita, Barbara Junge, Alisher Khamidov, Nina Khrushcheva,
Hiroshi Kimura, Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, Martin Klingst, John Kornblum, Ivan Krastev, Johann
Legner, Bobo Lo, Jenny Lo, Alexander Lukin, Georg Mascolo, Steven Lee Myers, James Nixey, Rene
Nyberg, Craig Oliphant, Tim Oliver, Bruce Parrott, William Partlett, Volker Perthes, Simon
Saradzhyan, Yukio Satoh, Zachary Shore, Mary Springer, Holger Stark, Constanze
Steltzenmüller, Stephen Szabo, Michael Thumann, Kazuhiko Togo, Mikhail Troitsky, Charles
Undeland, David Du Vivier, Thomas de Waal, Kyle Wilson, Igor Zevelev, and Nikolai Zlobin.
Finally, our dear friend and colleague Clara O'Donnell was a great source of inspiration and
ideas at the beginning of the new edition. Clara passed away in January 2014 and did not see
the project completed. Her loss is keenly felt, and perhaps this second edition of the book may
serve in some small measure as a testament to her accomplishments and memory.
We are grateful for the generous support of Stephen and Barbara Friedman, whose
contributions to the Brookings Foreign Policy program made this book possible. This revised
edition is part of Foreign Policy's project, Order from Chaos. The book's findings are in
keeping with Brookings's mission: to conduct high-quality and independent research and, based
on that research, to provide innovative, practical recommendations for policymakers and the
public. The conclusions and recommendations of any Brookings research are solely those of its
authors and do not reflect the views of the Institution, its management, or its other
scholars. PART ONETHE OPERATIVE EMERGES CHAPTER ONEWHO IS MR. PUTIN?
ON MARCH 18, 2014 , still bathed in the afterglow of the Winter
Olympics that he had hosted in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russian president Vladimir Putin
stepped up to a podium in the Kremlin to address the nation. Before an assembly of Russian
officials and parliamentarians, Putin signed the documents officially reuniting the Russian
Federation and the peninsular republic of Crimea, the home base of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.
Crimea had seceded from Ukraine only two days earlier, on March 16. The Russian president gave
what was intended to be a historic speech. The events were fresh, but his address was laden
with references to several centuries of Russian history.
Putin invoked the origins of Orthodox Christianity in Russia. He referenced military
victories on land and sea that had helped forge the Russian Empire. He noted the grievances
that had festered in Russia since the 1990s, when the state was unable to protect its interests
after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. At the center of his narrative was Crimea. Crimea
"has always been an inseparable part of Russia," Putin declared. Moscow's decision to annex
Crimea was rooted in the need to right an "outrageous historical injustice." That injustice
began with the Bolsheviks, who put lands that Russia had conquered into their new Soviet
republic of Ukraine. Then, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev made the fateful decision in 1954 to
transfer Crimea from the Russian Federation to Ukraine. When the Soviet state fell apart in
1991, Russian-speaking Crimea was left in Ukraine "like a sack of potatoes," Putin said.
1 The Russian nation was divided by borders.
Vladimir Putin's speech and the ceremony reuniting Russia with its "lost province" came
after several months of political upheaval in Ukraine. Demonstrations that had begun in late
November 2013 as a protest against Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych's decision to back out
of the planned signing of an association agreement with the European Union soon turned into a
large-scale protest movement against his government. By February 2014, protesters were engaged
in clashes with Ukrainian police that left over 100 people dead on both sides. 2 On February 21, 2014, talks between Yanukovych and the
opposition were brokered by outside parties, including Russia. A provisional agreement,
intended to end the violence and pave the way for new presidential elections at the end of
2014, was upended when Yanukovych abruptly fled the country. After several days of confusion,
Yanukovych resurfaced in Russia. Meanwhile, the opposition in Ukraine formed an interim
government and set presidential elections for May 25, 2014.
At about the same time that Yanukovych left Ukraine, unidentified armed men began to seize
control of strategic infrastructure on the Crimean Peninsula. On March 6, the Crimean
parliament voted to hold a snap referendum on independence and the prospect of joining Russia.
On March 16, the results of the referendum indicated that 97 percent of those voting had opted
to unite with Russia. It was this referendum that Putin used to justify Russia's
reincorporation, its annexation, of Crimea. He opened his speech with a reference to the
referendum and how more than 82 percent of eligible voters had turned out to make this
momentous and overwhelming choice in favor of becoming part of Russia. The people of Crimea had
exercised their right -- the right of all nations -- to self-determination. They had chosen to
restore the unity of the Russian world and historical Russia. But by annexing the Crimean
Peninsula, immediately after the referendum, Putin had dealt the greatest blow to European
security since the end of the Cold War. In the eyes of most external observers, Putin's Russia
was now a definitively revisionist power. In a short span of time, between February 21 and
March 18, 2014, Russia had moved from brokering peace to taking a piece of Ukraine.
As Western leaders deliberated how to punish Putin for seizing Crimea and deter him from
similar actions in the rest of Ukraine and elsewhere, questions arose: Why did Putin do this?
What does he want? Many commentators turned back to questions that had been asked nearly 15
years earlier, when Vladimir Putin first emerged from near-obscurity to become the leader of
Russia: "Who is Mr. Putin?" For some observers, the answer was easy: Putin was who he had
always been -- a corrupt, avaricious, and power-hungry authoritarian leader. What Putin did in
Ukraine was just a logical next step to what he had been doing in Russia since 2000: trying to
tighten his grip on power. Annexing Crimea and the nationalist rhetoric Putin used to justify
it were merely ploys to bolster his flagging public support and distract the population from
problems at home. Other commentators saw Putin's shift toward nationalist rhetoric and his
decision to annex Crimea as evidence of new "imperial" thinking, and as dangerously genuine.
Putin's goal, they proposed, was to restore the Soviet Union or the old Russian Empire. But if
that was true, where were the patterns and key indicators of neo-imperialist revisionism in
Putin's past behavior? Many world leaders and analysts wondered what they had missed. Unable to
reconcile their old understanding of Putin with his behavior in Ukraine, some concluded that
Putin himself had changed. A "new Putin" must have appeared in the Kremlin.
If, in fact, Putin's behavior in the Ukraine crisis was really different from the past, it
could provide an opportunity to understand him better. In his 2014 book, A
Sense of the Enemy: The High-Stakes History of Reading Your Rival's Mind, Zachary Shore
argues that it is precisely when people break with previous patterns of behavior that we can
begin to gain an understanding of their real character. Patterns of past behavior are a poor
predictor of how a person will act in the future. Contexts change and alter people's actions.
Pattern breaks are key for analyzing individual behavior. They push us to focus on the
invariant aspects of the person's self. They help reveal the hidden drivers, the underlying
motivations, and what an actor, a leader, values most. 3
This is the essence of our approach in this book. The book is an effort to figure out who
Mr. Putin is in terms of his motivations -- what drives him to act as he does? Rather than
present a chronicle of events in which Putin played a role, we concentrate on events that
shaped him. We look at formative experiences of Putin's past. And where
we do examine his actions, we focus on the circumstances in which he
acted. Our reasoning is that if Putin's actions and words differed during the crisis in Ukraine
in 2014 from what we might have expected in the past, it is likely that the circumstances
changed. Indeed, as we will lay out and describe in the two parts of this book, Vladimir
Putin's behavior is driven by the imperative to adapt and respond to changing -- especially,
unpredicted -- circumstances.
This book is not intended to be a definitive biography or a comprehensive study of
everything about Vladimir Putin. Although personal and even intimate life experiences shape the
way an individual thinks and views the world, we do not delve into Putin's family life or close
friendships. We also do not critique all the different stories about him, and we try to avoid
retreading ground that has been covered extensively in other analyses and biographies. Our
purpose is to look for new insights in all the material we have on Vladimir Putin.
THE ELUSIVE NATURE OF FACTS
It is remarkable -- almost hard to believe -- that for 15 years there has not been a single
substantive biography published in Russian, by a Russian, of President Putin. It is true that a
few very incomplete books -- limited in their scope -- appeared in his first months as
president. There is also, of course, Putin's own autobiography, Ot pervogo
litsa (First person), which appeared in early 2000. 4 Arguably the only
other true biography with wide circulation in Russia is a translation of Alexander Rahr's
Wladimir Putin: Der "Deutsche" im Kreml (Vladimir Putin: the "German"
in the Kremlin). 5 By contrast, there have been a number of serious
biographies of Putin in English. The West, particularly the United States, is used to a steady
flow of memoirs, and tell-alls, from former associates of our leaders. There has been nothing
like that in Russia. Rather than the flow of information about the man who has led the country
for a decade and a half growing stronger, it has actually declined over time. Above all, the
information that does emerge has been increasingly controlled and manipulated. Instead of
independently verifiable new facts from identified sources, there are only "stories" about
Putin from unidentified sources, sources who are -- we are invariably assured by those who tell
the stories -- "close to the Kremlin." There is also the phenomenon of old stories being
recycled as astonishing new revelations.
Attempting to write about Vladimir Putin is thus a challenge for many reasons. One that we
ourselves never imagined until we were well into this venture is that, like it or not, when you
delve into his hidden aspects, whether in the past or present, you are playing a game with
Putin. It is a game where he is in charge. He controls the facts and the "stories." For that
reason, every apparent fact or story needs to be regarded with suspicion. It has to be traced
back to original sources. If that turns out to be impossible, or the source seems unreliable,
what does one do with the information? As the reader will soon find out, we too use stories
about Putin. But we do so with caution. We have tested the sources. When we were unable to do
so to the fullest extent, we make that clear. Most important, we have learned to ask the
question, "Why has this story been circulated?"
The most obvious reason we cannot take any story or so-called fact at face value when it
comes to Vladimir Putin is that we are dealing with someone who is a master at manipulating
information, suppressing information, and creating pseudo-information. In the course of
studying Putin, and Putin's Russia, we have learned this the hard way. In today's world of
social media, the public has the impression that we know, or easily can know, everything about
everybody. Nothing, it seems, is private or secret. And still, after 15 years, we remain
ignorant of some of the most basic facts about a man who is arguably the most powerful
individual in the world, the leader of an important nation. When there is no certifiably real
and solid information, any tidbit becomes precious.
THE PUTIN BIOGRAPHY
Where then do we start? The basic biographical data, surely, are beyond dispute. Vladimir
Putin was born in the Soviet city of Leningrad in October 1952 and was his parents' only
surviving child. His childhood was spent in Leningrad, where his youthful pursuits included
training first in sambo (a martial art combining judo and wrestling that was developed by the
Soviet Red Army) and then in judo. After school, Putin studied law at Leningrad State
University (LGU), graduated in 1975, and immediately joined the Soviet intelligence service,
the KGB. He was posted to Dresden in East Germany in 1985, after completing a year of study at
the KGB's academy in Moscow. He was recalled from Dresden to Leningrad in 1990, just as the
USSR was on the verge of collapse.
During his time in the KGB, Putin worked as a case officer (the "operative" of our title)
and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel. In 1990–91, he moved into the intelligence
service's "active reserve" and returned to Leningrad State University as a deputy to the vice
rector. He became an adviser to one of his former law professors, Anatoly Sobchak, who left the
university to become chairman of Leningrad's city soviet, or council. Putin worked with Sobchak
during Sobchak's successful electoral campaign to become the first democratically elected mayor
of what was now St. Petersburg. In June 1991, Putin became a deputy mayor of St. Petersburg and
was put in charge of the city's Committee for External Relations. He officially resigned from
the KGB in August 1991.
In 1996, after Mayor Sobchak lost his bid for reelection, Vladimir Putin moved to Moscow to
work in the Kremlin in the department that managed presidential property. In March 1997, Putin
was elevated to deputy chief of the presidential staff. He assumed a number of other
responsibilities within the Kremlin before being appointed head of the Russian Federal Security
Service (the FSB, the successor to the KGB) in July 1998. A year later, in August 1999,
Vladimir Putin was named, in rapid succession, one of Russia's first deputy prime ministers and
then prime minister by President Boris Yeltsin, who also indicated Putin was his preferred
successor as president. Finally, on December 31, 1999, Putin became acting president of Russia
after Yeltsin resigned. He was officially elected to the position of president in March 2000.
Putin served two terms as Russia's president from 2000 to 2004 and from 2004 to 2008, before
stepping aside -- in line with Russia's constitutional prohibition against three consecutive
presidential terms -- to assume the position of prime minister. In March 2012, Putin was
reelected to serve another term as Russia's president until 2018, thanks to a constitutional
amendment pushed through by then President Dmitry Medvedev in December 2008 extending the
presidential term from four to six years.
These basic facts have been covered in books and newspaper articles. Yet there is some
uncertainty in the sources about specific dates and the sequencing of Vladimir Putin's
professional trajectory. This is especially the case for his KGB service, but also for some of
the period when he was in the St. Petersburg mayor's office, including how long he was
technically part of the KGB's "active reserve." Personal information, including on key
childhood events, his 1983 marriage to his wife, Lyudmila (whom he divorced in 2014), the birth
of two daughters in 1985 and 1986 (Maria and Yekaterina), and his friendships with politicians
and businessmen from Leningrad/St. Petersburg is remarkably scant for such a prominent public
figure. His wife, daughters, and other family members, for example, are conspicuously absent
from the public domain. Information about him that was available at the beginning of his
presidency has also been suppressed, distorted, or lost in a morass of competing and often
contradictory versions swirling with rumor and innuendo. Some materials -- related to a
notorious 1990s food scandal in St. Petersburg, which almost upended Putin's early political
career -- have been expunged, along with those with access to them. When it comes to Mr. Putin,
very little information is definitive, confirmable, or reliable.
As a result, there are many important and enduring mysteries about Vladimir Putin that we
will not address in detail in this book. Take something so fundamental as his initial rise to
power as Russian president. In less than two-and-a-half years from 1997 to 99, Vladimir Putin
was promoted to increasingly lofty positions, from deputy chief of the presidential staff, to
head of the FSB, to prime minister, then to acting president. How could this happen? Who
facilitated Putin's rise? Putin does not have a story about that in his official biographical
interviews. He leaves it to others to spin their versions. The fact that there are multiple
competing answers to such a basic question as who chose Putin to be Boris Yeltsin's successor
in 1999 is one of the reasons we decided to write this book and to adopt the specific approach
we have. All the versions of who made this important decision are based on retrospective
accounts, including from Boris Yeltsin himself in his memoir Midnight
Diaries. Almost nothing comes from real-time statements or reliable accounts of actions
taken. Even then -- if this kind of information were available -- we would not know what really
happened behind the scenes. It is clear that many of the after-the-fact statements are
self-serving. None of them seem completely credible. They are from people trying to claim
credit, or avoid blame, for a set of decisions that proved monumental for Russia.
Rather than spending time parsing the course of events in this period and analyzing the
various people who may or may not have influenced the decision to install Vladimir Putin as
Boris Yeltsin's successor, we parse and analyze Putin himself. We focus on a series of
vignettes from his basic biography that form part of a more coherent, larger story. We also
emphasize Putin's own role in getting where he did. We stress the one thing we are certain
about: Putin shaped his own fate. We do not deny there was an element of accident or chance in
his ultimate rise to power. Nor do we deny there were real people who acted on his behalf --
people who thought at a particular time that he was "their man" who would promote their
interests. But, for us, it was what Mr. Putin did that is the most critical element in his
biography.
As a good KGB operative, Vladimir Putin kept his own ambitions tightly under wraps. Like
most ambitious people, he took advantage of the opportunities that presented themselves. Mr.
Putin paid close attention to individuals who might further his career. He studied them,
strengthened his personal and professional ties to them, did favors for them, and manipulated
them. He allowed -- even actively encouraged -- people to underestimate him even as he
maneuvered himself into influential positions and quietly accumulated real power. Instead of
providing a "Who's Who" of Vladimir Putin's political circle, we highlight some of the people
who played important roles for Putin at different junctures. These include Russian historical
figures whose biographies and ideas Putin appropriated and tailored to suit his own personal
narrative. They also include a few people from his inner circle whose relationships and roles
illuminate the connections Putin developed to put himself in a position to become Russian
president and, more important, to become a president with the power to implement his goals.
None of Vladimir Putin's personal ties, however, made his rise to power inevitable.
To understand our approach, it might be useful to present a couple of examples of the
specious "stories" that have circulated about Putin and have been taken at face value by some
authors. One is the story of Putin's alleged personal fortune. The other relates to an apparent
KGB assessment of Putin as a dangerously risk-prone individual who likes to gamble.
PUTIN'S PERSONAL WEALTH
In the wake of Putin's actions in Ukraine in the spring of 2014 and the search by
politicians in the West for effective levers to "punish Putin," one tempting option was to
focus on the Russian president's personal wealth. Over the years, there have been repeated
stories about how Mr. Putin had accumulated a vast fortune thanks to massive corruption within
the inner circle of what we call Russia, Inc. 6 Early on, it was rumored
that Putin's net worth was $20 billion. With each retelling, the number grew -- $30 billion,
$40 billion, $70 billion, up (at last count) to $100 billion. These stories date back to
Putin's time in the St. Petersburg mayor's office, they implicate his family and close
associates, and they have been frequently featured in Russian as well as Western media. There
is, however, little hard documentary evidence to back up even the most credible reporting.
7
Some of the world's top financial institutions have conducted serious research on how the
corrupt hide their stolen assets. 8 We did not have the means to
undertake the kind of detailed and laborious technical work necessary to pursue Mr. Putin's
purported ill-gotten gains, nor did we want to engage in further conjecture on this subject. As
we indicate in the book, there is notable circumstantial evidence -- including expensive
watches and suits -- of Mr. Putin's supposedly luxurious lifestyle beyond the official
trappings of the Russian presidency. These extravagances on their own do not make the case that
he has amassed a fortune in the tens of billions of dollars. There are competing narratives
that Putin's day-to-day lifestyle is ascetic rather than luxurious. It is certainly true that
individuals with close and long-standing personal ties to Vladimir Putin now occupy positions
of great responsibility within the Russian economy and are some of Russia's (and the world's)
richest men. In interviews, they are remarkably frank in discussing the links between their
political connections, their economic roles, and their money.
There might also be political reasons for Putin to accumulate and flaunt personal wealth.
Indeed, some of the stories in the Russian press, and some related to us by Russian colleagues,
suggest that Mr. Putin himself might even encourage rumors that he is the richest of the rich
to curb political ambitions among Russia's billionaire businessmen, the so-called oligarchs.
They cannot even compete in the realm of personal wealth with Vladimir Putin, and it is he who
has supreme power in Russia. But this is all speculation about facts that remain, for now,
unproven.
The problem arises when this so-called fact of huge personal wealth leads to the conclusion
that greed must necessarily be Vladimir Putin's principal motivation, or that somehow the fear
of losing his personal fortune, or his associates' fortunes, would restrain his actions in the
international arena. Even if Vladimir Putin has enriched himself and those around him, we do
not believe a quest for personal wealth is primarily what drives him. We need to understand
what else motivates Putin's actions as head of the Russian state.
A "DIMINISHED SENSE OF DANGER"
One idea that gained currency during the crisis in Ukraine is that Putin is a reckless
gambler who takes dangerous risks. 9 This argument is based on the
alleged fact that Putin's KGB trainers deemed that he suffered from a "diminished sense of
danger" ( ponizhennoye chuvstvo opasnosti ). Although presented in a
couple of recent books about Putin as if it were a new revelation, this is a story familiar to
anyone who has read Putin's 2000 book, Ot pervogo litsa.10 There, Putin describes how, when he was studying at the KGB
academy, one characteristic ascribed to him as a "negative trait" was a "diminished" or
"lowered sense of danger" -- a deficiency that was considered very serious, he noted.
11
In fact, the Putin book turns out to be the only source for this story, something that ought
to have set off alarm bells. Ot pervogo litsa was intended to be a
campaign biography, or "semi-autobiography." The publication of the book was orchestrated by
Putin's staff in the spring of 2000 based on a series of one-on-one interviews with a carefully
selected troika of Russian journalists. Putin's team's task was to stage-manage the initial
presentation, to all of Russia, of this relatively unknown person who was now standing for
election as president of the country. It was crafted as a set of conversations with Putin
himself, his wife, and other people close to him in his childhood and early life. Every
vignette, every new fact presented in the book was chosen for a specific political purpose. The
journalists who interviewed Putin also used some of the material for articles in their own
newspapers and other publications.
What, then, could Putin's purpose have been in revealing such a character flaw? The answer
becomes evident when one reflects on the curious ending of the book. Ot
pervogo litsa ends with the interviewers noting that Putin seems, after all the episodes in
his life that they have gone through, to be a predictable and rather boring person. Had he
never done anything on a whim perhaps? Putin responded by recounting an incident when he risked
his own life and that of his passenger, his martial arts coach, while driving on a road outside
Leningrad (in fact when he was at university). He tried to grab a piece of hay through his open
car window from a passing farm truck and very nearly lost control of the car. At the end of the
harrowing ride, his white-faced (and presumably furious) coach turned to Putin and said, "You
take risks." Why did Putin do that? "I guess I thought the hay smelled good" ( Navernoye, seno vkusno pakhlo ), said Putin. 12 This is the last
line in the book. The reader clearly is meant to identify with Putin's coach and ask: "Wait!
What was that all about? Just who is this guy?"
This story offers a classic case of Putin and his team imparting and spinning information in
a confusing manner so that it can be interpreted in multiple ways. Putin tells contradictory
versions of the story in the same passages of his book. Immediately after stating that the
characteristic was ascribed to him during his KGB studies, Putin then suggests that his
"lowered sense of danger" was well-known to him and all his friends already in his university
days (that is, before he was ever in the KGB). 13 Putin wants people to see
him in certain ways, and yet be confused. He promotes the idea of himself both as a risk-taker
and as someone who takes calculated risks and always has a fallback option. Which version is
the real one? Both have a certain power and useful effect. The end result of Putin's
misinformation and contradictory information is to create the image that he is unknowable and
unpredictable and therefore even dangerous. It is part of his play in the domestic and
international political game -- to keep everyone guessing about, and in some cases fearing, how
he might react.
Putin is hardly the first world leader to engage in this sort of conscious image
manipulation to create doubts about their rationality or even sanity. Richard Nixon's notorious
"Madman Theory" during the Vietnam War is a case in point. In 1972, believing he had a chance
to bluff the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table to end the war, Nixon instructed his
national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, to convey the message to the North Vietnamese, via
their Soviet backers, that Nixon was prepared to use a nuclear weapon. As James Rosen and Luke
Nichter write in a recent article, "Nixon wanted to impress upon the Soviets that the president
of the United States was, in a word, mad: unstable, erratic in his decision-making, and capable
of anything." 14 In a memoir, former White House chief of staff H. R.
Haldeman wrote that Nixon had carefully scripted it all. According to Haldeman, Nixon told him,
"I call it the Madman Theory . I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point
where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, 'for God's
sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry -- and
he has his hand on the nuclear button,' and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days
begging for peace." 15
In reality, Putin's goal in planting stories about himself is more complicated than Nixon's.
He is not simply trying to project a specific image of himself or even to sow confusion about
the "real" Putin. He also wants to track how the initial seeding of an idea is carried forward,
and by whom. Putin wants to see how the original version is embellished and then how it
ultimately is played back to him again. This is an exercise. It is Putin's own version of an
American children's game, "telephone" (known in the United Kingdom as "Chinese whispers," where
it was also called, in earlier versions, "Russian scandal"). In seeding intrigue, Putin wants
to see how others interpret what he says and then how they react. The focus is on people's
perceptions rather than reality. Figuring out how others think and act, when they know nothing
about him or how he operates, gives Mr. Putin a tactical political advantage.
As we have concluded over the course of writing this book, for Vladimir Putin the main thing
about information is not whether it is true or not. It is how words and deeds are perceived by
others. Putin is less interested in presenting a particular version of reality than in seeing
how others react to the information. For him, others are participants in a game he directs. He
chooses inputs, they react. He judges. Their responses to his input tell him who they think he
is -- but by responding they also tell him who they are, what
they want, what they care about. For his part,
Vladimir Putin reveals very little in return. Indeed, he goes to great, often elaborate,
lengths to throw other participants off track. As president and prime minister, he has
presented himself as a myriad of different personas. Since 2000, Mr. Putin has been the
ultimate international political performance artist.
THE KREMLIN SPECIAL PROPS DEPARTMENT: STAGING THE PRESIDENT
Over the last several years, Vladimir Putin's public relations team has pushed his image in
a multiplicity of directions, pitching him as everything from big game hunter and
conservationist to scuba diver to biker -- even nightclub crooner. Leaders of other countries
have gained notoriety for their flamboyant or patriotic style of dressing to appeal to and
rally the masses -- like Fidel Castro's and Hugo Chávez's military fatigues, Yasser
Arafat's ubiquitous keffiyeh scarf, Muammar Qaddafi's robes (and tent), Hamid Karzai's
carefully calculated blend of traditional Afghan tribal dress, and Yulia Tymoshenko's
ultra-chic Ukrainian-peasant blonde braids -- but Vladimir Putin has out-dressed them all. He
has appeared in an endless number of guises for encounters with the press or Russian special
interest groups, or at times of crisis, as during raging peat bog fires around Moscow in 2010,
when he was transformed into a fire-fighting airplane pilot. All this theatricality is done
with the assistance, it would seem, of the Kremlin's inexhaustible wardrobe and special props
department.
On the surface, Mr. Putin's antics are reminiscent of a much-beloved children's book and
animated cartoon series in the United Kingdom, "Mr. Benn." Each morning, Mr. Benn, a
nondescript British man in a standard issue bowler hat and business suit, strolls down his
street and is beckoned into a mysterious costume shop by a mustachioed, fez-wearing shopkeeper.
The shopkeeper whisks Mr. Benn into a changing room. Mr. Benn puts on a costume that has
already been laid out by the shopkeeper, walks out a secret door, and assumes a new
costume-appropriate identity, as if by magic. In every episode, Mr. Benn solves a problem for
the people he encounters during his adventure, until summoned back to reality by the
shopkeeper. 16 Like his cartoon analogue, Mr. Putin, with the
assistance of his press secretary, Dmitry Peskov (mustachioed but without the fez), and a
coterie of press people, as if by magic embarks on a series of adventures (some of which oddly
enough overlap with Mr. Benn's). In the course of his adventures, Mr. Putin pulls off every
costume and performance with aplomb, a straight face, and a demonstration of skill.
Vladimir Putin and his PR team -- which closely monitors the public reactions to the Mr.
Putin episodes -- are aware that these performances lack universal appeal and have sparked
amusement at home and abroad because of their elaborate and very obvious staging. This has led
people to depict him as a shallow, cartoonish figure, or a man with no face, no substance, no
soul. Putin is often seen as a "man from nowhere," who can appear to be anybody to anyone.
17
But Russian intellectual elites, the Russian political opposition to Mr. Putin, and overseas
commentators are not his target audiences. Each episode of Mr. Putin has a specific purpose.
They are all based on feedback from opinion polls suggesting the Kremlin needs to reach out and
create a direct personal connection to a particular group among the Russian population. Press
Secretary Peskov admitted this directly in a meeting with the press in August 2011 after Mr.
Putin dove to the bottom of the Black Sea to retrieve some suspiciously immaculate amphorae.
18 Putin himself has asserted in biographical interviews that
one of his main skills is to get people -- in this case the Russian people, his audience(s) --
to see him as what they want him to be, not what he really is. These
performances portray Putin as the ultimate Russian action man, capable of dealing with every
eventuality.
THE SERIOUS SIDE: SHOWING RESPECT
It is important to realize that there is something deeper, more complicated, at work beneath
the façade of the "Mr. Putin" performances, something that an outside observer will always
find hard to grasp. Each of the guises that Putin adopts, and the actions he undertakes, pays a
degree of respect to a certain group and validates that group's place in Russian society. If
the Russian president pulls on a leather jacket and rides off on a motorcycle with Russia's
equivalent of the "Hell's Angels" or dresses up in a white suit to fly a microlight aircraft
directing the migration of endangered birds, Russian bikers and Russian conservationists both
get their time in the spotlight. Bikers and conservationists can believe they are equally
worthy of presidential attention. They have inspired presidential action. They have their role
to play in Russian society, just like everyone else. The performances create a sense of
commonality and unity.
Western politicians routinely set out to convince voters that they are one of them, downing
beers and snacks they would never normally eat in bars and restaurants they would not otherwise
frequent. But Putin is not out to win votes. He is running a country. His actions have more in
common with the leaders of traditional societies than Western leaders. Hamid Karzai, when
leader of Afghanistan from 2004 to 2014, for example, frequently told his Western interlocutors
that contrary to their interpretations of democracy, he understood democracy to be rule by
consensus, not by majority. Without consensus, Afghan society would quickly descend into
fragmentation, conflict, and violent strife. To bring reform to Afghanistan there had to be a
broad consensus. Consensus created unity. Traditional Afghan methods of forging consensus, like
the shura, a formalized consultation with societal leaders and elders,
were more effective in reaching consensus, Karzai argued, than Western parliamentary
innovations. The most important element of a shura, a consultation,
Karzai emphasized, was not reaching some kind of decision, but showing respect in a credible
way and validating the views of others. Karzai's adoption of traditional dress was one way of
establishing credibility. Showing up in person and sitting for hours at a shura, or inviting Afghan tribal leaders to meetings in his own home, and simply
listening to the discussions were important ways of showing respect. In Afghanistan, societal
leaders wanted to feel they had been listened to by the Afghan president, not just informed of
executive decisions after the fact. 19
Similarly, Putin has stressed on several occasions that he considers listening to the
Russian people and hearing what they have to say in person as part of his duty as head of the
Russian state. 20 He has traveled extensively to Russia's far-flung
regions over the course of his presidencies and during his time as prime minister and devised
an array of forums for meeting with and hearing from the public. In an impromptu 2012 meeting
with Russian-American journalist and author Masha Gessen, Putin also claimed that most of the
costumed stunts were his own idea and not his staff's. He wanted personally to draw attention
to certain people and places and issues that he thought were being neglected or, in other
words, not given sufficient respect by the rest of society. 21
Collectively, these small but elaborately staged and highly publicized acts of respect have
been one of the reasons why Vladimir Putin has consistently polled as Russia's most popular
politician for a decade and a half.
Putin's stage performances have the double advantage not only of ensuring his domestic
popularity but also of keeping outside analysts confused about his true identity. He benefits
from leaving people guessing about how accurately his various PR versions reflect his real
persona. But if we do not accept these stage performances as even partly reflecting his
identity, then the question remains: Who is Mr. Putin? In fact, Putin hints that he is like
Russia itself in the famous poem of Fyodor Tyutchev:
In this book, we pick up the idea of a multiplicity of Mr. Putins from his PR stunts in
creating a portrait that attempts to provide some answers to the question "Who is Mr. Putin?"
We argue that uncovering the multiple "real Putins" requires looking beyond the staged
performances and the deliberately assumed guises that constitute the Putin political brand. For
most of the first decade of the 2000s, Putin displayed remarkable strength as a political actor
in the Russian context. This strength was derived from the combination of six individual
identities we discuss and highlight in this book, not from his staged performances. We term
these identities the Statist, the History Man, the Survivalist, the Outsider, the Free
Marketeer, and the Case Officer. In Part I of this book, which focuses on the period up until 2012,
we discuss each of the identities in detail, looking at their central elements and evolution,
and their roots in Russian history, culture, and politics. We then explain how Russia's current
political system can be seen as a logical result of the combination of Putin's six identities,
along with the set of personal and professional relationships he formed over several decades in
St. Petersburg and Moscow.
We begin Part I with an initial set of three identities: the Statist, the
History Man, and the Survivalist. These are the most generic, in the sense that they
characterize a larger group of Russians than just Mr. Putin, especially Russian politicians in
Putin's general age cohort who began their careers during the Soviet period and launched
themselves onto the national political stage in the 1990s. These first three identities provide
the foundation for Mr. Putin's views about the Russian state, his political philosophy, and his
conception of his first presidential terms in the 2000s. The decade of the 1990s -- the Russian
Federation's first decade as a stand-alone, independent country after the dissolution of the
USSR -- is a central element in the Statist, History Man, and Survivalist identities. This was
the decade when Russia fell into economic and political crisis, and Moscow lost its direct
authority over the rest of the former Soviet republics, including lands that had previously
been part of the Russian Empire. This period also provides the overarching context for the
identities as well as for Vladimir Putin's personal political narrative. Putin began his tenure
as acting Russian president by publishing a December 1999 treatise, which we refer to as his
"Millennium Message," on the lessons from Russia's experience in the 1990s and how he would
address them. During his 2012 presidential election campaign, Putin returned to the themes of
this earlier treatise. He made frequent explicit reference to what he described as the chaos of
Russia in the 1990s under President Boris Yeltsin. He sharply contrasted this to the decade of
political and economic stability he believes that he, personally, brought to the country after
taking office in 1999. Putin essentially ran his 2012 campaign against the past, specifically
the 1990s, rather than against another candidate. Mr. Putin clearly sees his presidency as the
product of, as well as the answer to, the Russia of the 1990s.
The first three identities help explain Mr. Putin's goals, while the next three -- the
Outsider, the Free Marketeer, and the Case Officer -- are more personal. They are primarily
about the means he has been able to employ to achieve his ends. Putin's childhood experiences
in a working class neighborhood of Leningrad, his years in the KGB at home and abroad, and his
activities in the local government of post-Soviet St. Petersburg and then in a series of
below-the-radar positions in the Kremlin in the late 1990s, all left him with a unique
combination of skills and experience that helped propel him into the presidency in
1999–2000. They allowed him to build up and maintain the political and economic system
that has been in place in Russia ever since.
That system, and Mr. Putin personally, has faced major challenges, both at home and abroad,
in recent years. Part II of the book attempts to explain Putin's responses to those
challenges in terms of the framework developed in Part I . At home, beginning with a political crisis
in 2011–12, it seemed that some of Mr. Putin's core identities had ceased being strengths
and had become sources of weakness for him, as well as a fundamental vulnerability for the
personalized system of governance he had created within the Kremlin. As we will show, key
elements of his identities prevented Mr. Putin from relating and connecting to thousands of
Russian citizens who took to the streets in protest after Russia's 2011 parliamentary and 2012
presidential elections. In the end, however, Putin prevailed over the protesters. We will argue
that he did so by going back to his core identities.
Our final chapters in Part II examine Mr. Putin in the context of his views of and
interactions with the outside world, culminating with the crisis in Ukraine in 2013–14.
Our objective is to understand Putin's motivations and his behavior by again drawing upon the
insights of Part I . We first trace the evolution of his thinking about Russia's
relations with the outside world and then show how Mr. Putin, the Operative in the Kremlin,
translated that thinking into action as the Operative Abroad.
A CONTEXTUAL PORTRAIT
The ultimate purpose of our analysis is to provide a portrait of Mr. Putin's mental outlook,
his worldview, and the individual aspects, or identities, that comprise this worldview. Like
everyone else, Putin is an amalgam, a composite, of his life experiences. Putin's identities
are parallel, not sequential. They blend into each other and are not mutually exclusive. In
many respects they could be packaged differently from the way we present them. The most generic
identities -- the Statist, the History Man, and the Survivalist -- could be merged together.
They overlap in some obvious ways and have some themes in common. Nonetheless, there are key
distinctions in each of them that we seek to tease out. Putin's outlook has been shaped by many
influences: a combination of the Soviet and Russian contexts in which he grew up, lived and
worked; a personal interest in Russian history and literature; his legal studies at Leningrad
State University (LGU); his KGB training; his KGB service in Dresden in East Germany; his
experiences in 1990s St. Petersburg; his early days in Moscow in 1996–99; and his time at
the helm of the Russian state since 2000. Instead of trying to track down all the Putin stories
to fit with these experiences, we have built a contextual narrative based on the known parts of
Putin's biography, a close examination of his public pronouncements over more than a decade,
and, not least, our own personal encounters with Mr. Putin. 23
Just as we do not know who exactly selected Mr. Putin to be Boris Yeltsin's successor in
1999, we do not know specifically what Putin did during his 16 years in the KGB. We do,
however, know the context of the KGB during the period when Vladimir Putin operated in it. So,
for example, we have examined the careers, published writings, and memoirs of leading KGB
officials such as Yury Andropov and Filipp Bobkov -- the people who shaped the institution and
thus Putin's role in it. Similarly, Putin constantly refers to Russia's "time of troubles" in
the 1990s as the negative reference point for his presidency and premiership. Although we do
not know exactly what Putin was thinking about in the 1990s, we know a great deal about the
events and debates of this decade in which people around him were closely involved. We also
have ample evidence in Mr. Putin's own writings and speeches from 1999 to 2014, of his
appropriation of the core concepts and language of an identifiable body of political and legal
thought from the 1990s. In short, we know what others around Mr. Putin said or did in a certain
timeframe, even if we cannot always prove what Putin himself was up to. We focus on what seems
the most credible in a particular context to draw out information relevant to Putin's specific
identities.
But before we turn to Mr. Putin's six identities, we begin with the context of his emergence
onto the political scene -- Russia of the 1990s. Putin did not appear out of the blue or from
"nowhere" when he arrived in Moscow in 1996 to take up a position in the Russian presidential
administration. He most demonstrably came from St. Petersburg. He also came from a group around
Mayor Anatoly Sobchak to whom he had first gravitated in the 1970s when he was a student in
LGU's law faculty and Sobchak was a lecturer there. Vladimir Putin's KGB superiors later
assigned him to work at LGU in 1990, bringing him back into Anatoly Sobchak's orbit. Features
of Mr. Putin's personality then drew him into the center of Sobchak's team as the former law
professor campaigned to become mayor of St. Petersburg. Because of his real identities -- and
particular (often unsavory) skills associated with his role as a former KGB case officer --
Vladimir Putin was subsequently determined by the St. Petersburg mayor and his close circle of
associates to be uniquely well-suited for the task of enforcing informal rules and making
corrupt businesses deliver in the freewheeling days of the 1990s. Putin became widely known as
"Sobchak's fixer," and some of the activities he engaged in while in St. Petersburg helped pave
his way to power in Moscow. CHAPTER TWOBORIS YELTSIN AND THE TIME OF TROUBLES
SOME COMMENTATORS HAVE DEPICTED THE story of how Mr. Putin came to
be prime minster and then president of Russia as something akin to a tragedy that ruptured what
appeared to be a generally positive trajectory of post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s toward the
development of a more pluralistic democratic state and market economy. Vladimir Putin views the
trajectory of 1990s in a very different way. For him, the Russian state was in a downward
spiral. His elevation to the presidency at the end of 1999 was the logical culmination of, as
well as the response to, a series of sometimes fatal (not just fateful) mistakes made by
Russian political figures over the course of this tumultuous decade. The agenda of his
presidency was an explicit response to the 1990s. His goal, as he himself often states, was to
address the mistakes that were made and put Russia back on track.
The early part of the 1990s was framed by the great upheaval of the Soviet collapse,
attempts at radical economic reform, and a declaration of hostilities between an ambitious
Russian parliament and a weak presidency. In the years before Mr. Putin came to Moscow,
factional squabbling within the Russian leadership, and endless changes in top personnel and
the composition of the Russian government, created a strong sense that President Boris Yeltsin
had allowed events to spin out of control. In 1993, President Yeltsin laid siege to the Russian
parliamentary building to force a recalcitrant legislature to its knees and back into line with
the executive branch, thus inaugurating a period of rule by presidential decree that would last
for several years. In 1994, Yeltsin launched a brutal and unsuccessful domestic war to suppress
an independence drive in the republic of Chechnya, sparking two decades of brutal conflict and
ongoing insurgency in Russia's North Caucasus region. In 1996, Yeltsin's team ran a dirty
election campaign to keep their, by now, ailing and unpopular leader in the Kremlin. They made
a deal for political support with the oligarchs -- the leading figures in Russia's new private
business sectors -- that resulted in the supposed pioneers of Russia's market economy
manipulating politics and fighting among themselves over the purchase of former state assets.
In the same timeframe, repeated setbacks to Russia's foreign policy goals in the Balkans and
elsewhere in the former Soviet space compounded a public perception of disorder verging on
chaos.
One narrative among the Russian political and intellectual elite in this period -- both
inside and outside government -- was that the Russian state had fallen into another time of
troubles ( smutnoye vremya ). This is the narrative that Putin adopted
when he embarked on his presidency in 1999–2000. Russia's infamous smutnoye vremya was the historical period that marked the end of the sixteenth and
beginning of the seventeenth century. The death of the last tsar of the Rurikid dynasty was
followed by uprisings, invasions, and widespread famine before the establishment and
consolidation of the new Romanov dynasty. Boris Yeltsin's critics compared him unfavorably with
Boris Godunov, the notorious de facto Russian regent during the time of troubles. Similar
evocations were made to other historical periods of insurgency and uncertainty in the
eighteenth century under Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, to the aftermath of the
Decembrist revolt in the 1820s–30s, and to the long span of episodic revolutionary
turmoil from the 1860s up to World War I that culminated in the Revolution of 1917.
1
On January 1, 1992, President Yeltsin launched an ambitious economic reform program intended
to transform Russia's inherited Soviet economy into a modern market economy. The approach,
labeled "shock therapy," was modeled on the recent experience of transition in Poland and other
former communist countries. The key steps included the abolition of central planning for
manufacturing and other production, the privatization of government enterprises, rapid
liberalization of prices, and stark budget cuts aimed at restoring fiscal balance. For a
Russian population that for decades had known only fixed prices, lifetime employment
guarantees, and a cradle-to-grave welfare system, there was no doubt about the shock. Since
virtually all prices were deregulated at the same time, they predictably jumped to
unprecedented levels in one single leap. Accumulated household savings were rendered worthless.
There were no provisions for compensation by the government. Enterprises were left without
government orders. Their directors had neither the time nor the skills to find alternative
customers before they had to simply shut down production. 2 Unemployment
soared.
The austerity measures did not lead to any immediate improvement in government finances.
Deficits ballooned while government services collapsed. Yeltsin's team of academic
policymakers, headed by Yegor Gaidar, reassured the president and the public that all this had
been expected but that the painful period would be brief. Recovery was around the corner. The
result would be much greater prosperity than ever before under the Soviet system. The recovery
-- the therapy part of shock therapy -- did not come. Inflation raged: prices rose on average
by 20 percent a month throughout 1993. 3 Unemployment continued to grow.
The economy as a whole shifted from a growth and development orientation to pure survival. On a
private level, Russian households did the same. But publicly there was outrage.
From the outset, Gaidar and his group of young economists bore the brunt of the criticism
for the economic and political consequences of the program. They became the target of
conservative factions in the Russian parliament and industrial circles who had vested interests
in Soviet-style business as usual. By the end of 1992, they were out of the cabinet and Boris
Yeltsin had appointed Viktor Chernomyrdin, former head of the Russian gas industry and a member
of the industrial lobby, as prime minister. Although parliament viewed Chernomyrdin as a
proponent of a slower pace of reform, the conservative factions maintained their pressure on
President Yeltsin. With Gaidar no longer overseeing economic policy, the Russian parliament
moved to challenge Yeltsin on other political issues, including the process for passing a new
Russian constitution. Both the parliament and the presidential administration set about
creating their own competing drafts to replace the defunct Soviet-era constitution.
PRESIDENT VERSUS PARLIAMENT
The political standoff between the Russian legislative and executive branches degenerated to
the point where effective governance was virtually impossible. In September 1993, Yeltsin
abolished the existing parliament and announced that there would be elections for a new lower
house in December 1993. He declared that the new lower house would now be called the State
Duma, the name of the late imperial Russian legislature. The Russian parliament countered by
naming its own acting president -- Vice President Alexander Rutskoi, who had moved into open
political opposition to Yeltsin. Rutskoi set up an alternative cabinet in the "White House,"
the Russian parliamentary building. The confrontation came to a bloody end on October
3–4, 1993. Supporters of the parliament marched on Ostankino, the Moscow television
tower, and a number of protesters were killed in a skirmish with interior ministry forces. On
the morning of October 4, Yeltsin ordered Russian military tanks to fire on the White House to
force his erstwhile vice president and the deputies to surrender. One hundred forty-five people
were killed and 800 wounded in the assault and associated street fighting, according to
official statements.
The events of October 1993 were (at that point) the most violent political confrontation in
the Russian capital since the Revolution of 1917. 4 They left their
mark on many Russian political figures of the period, including Mr. Putin. After the fighting
was over and new elections were held, President Yeltsin stripped the new State Duma of many
legislative oversight functions. He relocated parliament from the charred remnants of the White
House to an old Soviet building symbolically in the shadow of the Kremlin walls. The scorch
marks on the White House were washed off, the building was cleaned up and renovated, and it was
handed off to become the seat of the Russian government. In a January 2012 interview with the
British newspaper The Guardian, Gleb Pavlovsky -- a former Kremlin
adviser and political strategist who worked closely with Putin during his tenure as president
and prime minister before being fired in 2011 -- observed that the 1993 standoff between
Yeltsin and the parliament had a profound effect on Vladimir Putin. The assault on the White
House shaped Putin's views about what tended to happen when the balance of power shifted in
Russia. The losers in a political confrontation would be put against the wall and shot. "Putin
always said, we know ourselves we know that as soon as we move aside, you will destroy us. He
said that directly, you'll put us to the wall and execute us. And we don't want to go to the
wall that was a very deep belief and was based on [the] very tough confrontations of 1993 when
Yeltsin fired on the Supreme Soviet [parliament] and killed a lot more people -- Putin knows --
than was officially announced ." 5
A NEW PRESIDENTIAL CONSTITUTION
Fortunately for Putin, he was nowhere near either the Kremlin or the White House walls in
1993. He was a bystander to Yeltsin's showdown with the parliament, sitting on the sidelines in
the mayor's office in St. Petersburg. Putin's then boss, Anatoly Sobchak, however, was one of
the key drafters of the new Russian constitution. 6 This would prove
to be one of the most consequential documents for defining Putin's future presidency. Having
shelled the parliament into submission, Yeltsin pushed through a draft of the constitution that
granted the Russian president and the executive branch extensive powers over domestic and
foreign policy. In effect, Yeltsin's new constitution retroactively legitimized many of the
steps he had taken (excluding the military action) to curb the powers of parliament. It was a
potentially powerful tool for any president, like Mr. Putin, trying to secure the preeminent
position in Russian political life.
The 1993 Russian constitutional process was deeply rooted in earlier historical attempts to
create a constitution. Although there was a good deal of discussion of other international
conceptual sources and constitutional models, the document that emerged drew heavily from ideas
put forward in Russia's late tsarist era. One of the creators of the 1993 Russian constitution,
Sergei Shakhrai, would later claim that it was a "myth" that the Russian constitution had drawn
any inspiration whatsoever from any Western constitutional models -- except, perhaps, for the
fact that the Russian president was conceived as the "Russian equivalent of the British Queen."
7 (Great Britain, of course, does not have a constitution in the
modern sense of a single written document, nor does the British monarch have real political
power.) The Russian presidency enshrined in the constitution far exceeded even the U.S. and
French equivalents in its sweep of authority.
DEBACLE IN THE DUMA
In spite of the bloodletting and his new quasi-monarchical powers, President Yeltsin found
the Russian State Duma no easier to work with than the old parliament. The 1993 December
elections produced a parliament split between generally anti-reform parties, including the
nationalist Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation
(CPRF), and pro-reform parties such as Russia's Choice and the Russian United Democratic Party,
Yabloko ("apple"). Among the parties, the nationalist LDPR secured
almost a quarter (22.9 percent) of the popular vote, outstripping the second-place Russia's
Choice with 15 percent. 8 The Duma subsequently fell upon itself in a
series of factional and personal squabbles. Parties and blocs formed and reformed with dizzying
frequency, and some parliamentary sessions were disrupted by fistfights. 9 Similar scenes played out in regional legislatures, including
in St. Petersburg. A decade later, Putin would refer to the legislative rough and tumble with
considerable distaste, noting that the repeated brawls had given him a very low opinion of
politics. 10
In spring 1995, after much debate, a new election law was passed setting parliamentary
elections for December 1995 and presidential elections for June 1996. As would happen again in
2011, the Kremlin had an unpleasant "December surprise" in the 1995 parliamentary election. The
opposition Communist Party trounced the ruling party of the period, Nash
dom Rossiya (NDR), or Our Home Is Russia, which had been formed under the leadership of
Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to try to unify the range of pro-reform or "democratic"
parties. 11 As we will discuss later, Putin had his own role to play in
this debacle, leading NDR's local campaign in St. Petersburg, an experience that put him off
electoral politics even further.
YELTSIN, THE OLIGARCHS, AND THE JUNE 1996 ELECTION
The subsequent 1996 presidential election -- which like other Russian presidential elections
consisted of two rounds to reduce the pool of candidates to two if no one got a clear majority
of the vote -- was transformed into an apparent head-to-head contest between Yeltsin and
Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist Party leader. Zyuganov made it clear that he would end
Yeltsin's economic reforms and return to a modified Soviet-style system if he won the
presidency. At this fateful juncture, Yeltsin was undergoing his own personal time of troubles.
The Russian president was in poor health. He would in fact have a serious heart attack between
the electoral rounds and disappear from public view for a substantial period of time. These
troubles compounded his government's political difficulties. They also set the scene for
Putin's subsequent move to Moscow. Just before the presidential election, Yeltsin's approval
ratings fell to an all-time low of 3 percent. Yeltsin risked forfeiting the election to
Zyuganov unless the team around him could pull off a political miracle, but the team lacked the
resources for a full-scale national electoral campaign. The Kremlin's coffers were empty, and
new independent media outlets had eclipsed the stale programming and content of the old state
television, newspapers, and radio. 12
Yeltsin's team reached out to a set of business people who had benefitted directly from the
government's reform program. They had amassed fortunes in new financial institutions and
acquired stakes in the new media. Among them were Boris Berezovsky, head of Logovaz, one of
Russia's largest holding companies, which had controlling shares or interests in media outlets,
including the Russian television station ORT, the newspaper Nezavisimaya
gazeta, and the weekly magazine Ogonyok ; Vladimir Potanin, the
president of Uneximbank, Russia's third-largest bank in terms of assets; Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
head of the Menatep-Rosprom financial industrial group; Vladimir Gusinsky, the founder of the
Most Bank and media group; Pyotr Aven, a former Russian minister turned banker; Mikhail
Fridman, the president of Alfa Bank; and Alexander Smolensky, the head of Stolichny Savings
Bank. 13 In return for campaign contributions on a massive scale and
preferential media access, Yeltsin promised this group of seven oligarchs privileged bidding
positions for controlling shares in some of Russia's most important state companies in the oil
and gas, metallurgy, and other industrial sectors when they were privatized. This notorious
"loans-for-shares" agreement has been thoroughly parsed and widely documented. 14 It brought the titans of Russian business, the oligarchs, who
bankrolled the campaign into the business of deciding who would run Russia. It also laid the
ground for clashes between the Yeltsin "Family" (Boris Yeltsin's family members and his closest
associates) and some of the businessmen -- with serious political consequences for Russia in
the period leading up to 1999 -- as their respective sets of interests inevitably diverged.
15
The 1996 Russian presidential campaign prefigured the political tools, components, and
principal actors of the Putin era in the 2000s. The heavy use of Western-style PR, the negative
campaigning, discrediting of opponents, the rise of both independent reformed communist and
Russian nationalist political movements, and massive infusions of campaign capital from vested
private business interests paved the way for the politics of the subsequent decade. Gennady
Zyuganov became the main political pretender to the Russian presidency. He was also Putin's
primary putative opponent in the March 2012 presidential election, reprising his 1996 role.
Russian general and Afghan war hero Alexander Lebed, a strong nationalist candidate who came in
third place in the first round of the 1996 election, died in a helicopter crash in April 2002.
He was succeeded on the national stage at various points by his colleague and co-founder of the
Congress of Russian Communities (KRO) nationalist movement, Dmitry Rogozin. 16 Other political figures -- like nationalist politician
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, head of the LDPR, which Yeltsin's team in 1996 portrayed in the domestic
and international media as the stalking horse for fascism -- also became permanent fixtures of
the Russian political scene. After that election, some of the "magnificent seven" oligarchs
were given positions in the Russian government, including Boris Berezovsky as deputy secretary
of the Russian Security Council and Vladimir Potanin as first deputy prime minister.
Berezovsky, along with Vladimir Gusinsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, would later become the
dramatis personae of Putin's clashes with the oligarchs in the early 2000s. Berezovsky and
Gusinsky ended up in exile and Khodorkovsky was dispatched to a Siberian jail. 17
WAR IN CHECHNYA: DOUBLE-DEALING WITH RUSSIA'S REGIONS
In the midst of the political machinations around the parliament and the presidency, Yeltsin
was embroiled in another struggle to forge a new political relationship between Moscow and the
individual regions of the Russian Federation. This struggle unleashed a war in the Russian
North Caucasus that would also prove instrumental in Putin's rise to the presidency in 1999.
Like its dealings with parliament, the Yeltsin government's engagement with the regions was ad
hoc and contradictory. It vacillated among legislative measures, police action, military
intervention, repression, and conciliatory bilateral treaties that granted different regions
varying concessions. The policies Yeltsin initiated provided the frame for contentious
center-periphery relations that have dogged Vladimir Putin's time in office.
Protests against central government policies -- including changes in internal administrative
borders and Moscow's high-level political appointments at the regional and local level -- had
been an enduring feature of politics in the Soviet periphery since the late 1950s.
18 After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the
establishment of the Russian Federation, Russia's own regions continued to demand territorial
and political changes. The Russian North Caucasus republic of Chechnya declared its
independence and seceded, even before the end of the USSR, in November 1991. In February 1992,
Yeltsin tried to push through a new Federal Treaty to resolve all the contested issues.
Chechnya and the republic of Tatarstan in the Russian Volga region rejected it -- raising fears
that Russia would unravel like the USSR. Tatarstan and a number of other Russian regions then
rejected the provisions in the new 1993 Russian constitution that delineated regional powers.
As a stop-gap effort, the Yeltsin government concluded a bilateral treaty with Tatarstan in
February 1994. As far as Chechnya was concerned, Yeltsin made a half-hearted effort to
negotiate the republic's return to the Federation. He then threw Moscow's support behind forces
opposed to the independent Chechen government. A botched effort in summer 1994 to overthrow the
Chechen government ended with Chechen government forces capturing Russian operatives, who were
paraded in front of the media to humiliate Moscow and Yeltsin.
In December 1994, the Russian government launched a full-scale military assault on Chechnya.
The assault became the largest military campaign on Russian soil since World War II, with mass
civilian and military casualties and the almost complete destruction of Chechnya's principal
city, Grozny. In August 1996, just after the presidential election and simultaneous with
Putin's arrival in Moscow, the over-extended Russian military essentially collapsed as an
effective fighting force. The military's morale was sapped by high casualties, as well as by
shortages of critical armaments that forced commanders to dip into stocks of vintage World War
II ordnance. Even some of the most basic supplies for the predominantly conscript soldiers ran
out -- with appeals sent out during one part of the winter campaign for the Russian population
to knit thick socks for Russian forces fighting in the cold and unforgiving mountainous regions
of Chechnya. The war in Chechnya resulted in Russia's most significant military defeat since
Afghanistan the previous decade, but this time on its own territory. 19 Partly at the instigation of General Lebed -- who was now a
power to be reckoned with in Russian politics after his strong showing in the June presidential
election -- the Yeltsin government was forced to conclude a truce with the Chechen government.
In a subsequent peace agreement, Moscow agreed to end the military intervention and then
conclude a bilateral treaty on future relations with Chechnya. Many prominent figures in the
Russian political and military elite bristled at this humiliation and stressed that the
arrangements hammered out with Chechnya in 1996–97 would be temporary. 20
The war between Moscow and Chechnya emboldened other regions to demand bilateral treaties.
Instead of a stopgap measure, the treaties became the primary mechanism for regulating Moscow's
relations with its entire periphery. 21 Over a two-year period, the
Yeltsin government was forced to negotiate agreements with Bashkortorstan, a major
oil-producing region next to Tatarstan; republics neighboring Chechnya in the North Caucasus;
Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Irkutsk, all predominantly ethnic Russian regions
stretching from Russia's heartland into the Urals and the Lake Baikal region of Siberia; the
Siberian republic of Sakha-Yakutiya, which is the heart of Russia's diamond industry; the
exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea; and even St. Petersburg and the surrounding Leningrad
oblast. 22 The treaties proved a useful tool for avoiding further
ruinous conflict. They also resulted in the piecemeal, asymmetric decentralization of the
Russian state and a confounding set of overlapping responsibilities.
The bilateral treaties were extremely unpopular in central government and parliamentary
circles. By the end of the 1990s, as Putin rose to the top of the Russian government, they had
become one of the most enduring symbols of the administrative chaos and weakness of the Russian
state. Politicians in Moscow demanded they be overturned. With the treaties in place, leaders
of republics vaulted from the status of regional functionaries to presidents and national-level
political figures. Regional politicians reinterpreted Moscow's decrees to suit local concerns.
They refused to implement Russian federal legislation. They created their own economic
associations. They withheld tax revenues from the federal government. They openly criticized
central government policy. 23 Beyond Chechnya, this weakness found
perhaps its best expression in the Russian far east, in Primorsky Krai. There, at the furthest
edge of the Russian Federation, Moscow engaged in what seemed like a never-ending political
battle with the region's obstinate governor, Yevgeny Nazdratenko. From his political perch in
Vladivostok, the governor assailed the Yeltsin government's attempts to reach a border
agreement with China. He accused Moscow of cutting off Primorsky Krai's access to the Pacific
Ocean. He stationed his own paramilitary Cossack forces on the border, diverted federal funds
for his personal pet projects, and generally harangued Yeltsin for creating the region's
chronic economic problems. 24 Putin would later find a creative way of
dealing with Governor Nazdratenko that would become a hallmark of his efforts to deal with
other difficult personalities in the 2000s.
THWARTED ABROAD
In the meantime, as the Yeltsin government waged war with Chechnya and engaged in a
tug-of-war with Primorsky Krai, Moscow's foreign policy faltered. Russia's internecine
conflicts and economic weakness constrained its ability to exert influence on consequential
developments abroad. In the late 1980s USSR, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Foreign
Minister Eduard Shevardnadze had drawn a direct link between domestic and foreign policy. To
secure international financial support for restructuring and revitalizing the Soviet economy,
they abandoned the USSR's traditional confrontational posture toward the West and focused
instead on reducing international tensions. 25 Boris Yeltsin initially
continued the same foreign policy line with Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev. During the early
stages of shock therapy, relations with international financial and political institutions and
the United States were prioritized. On February 1, 1992, President Yeltsin and U.S. president
George Herbert Walker Bush issued a joint declaration that Russia and the United States were no
longer adversaries. They proclaimed a new era of strategic partnership.
Optimism for this partnership rapidly faded as Russia's relations with the West became mired
in a series of international crises. After the break-up of Yugoslavia, full-scale fighting
erupted in Sarajevo, the capital of the new state of Bosnia-Herzegovina. United Nations (UN)
sanctions were slapped against Serbia -- Yugoslavia's primary successor state and one of
imperial Russia's traditional regional allies -- which openly supported ethnic Serbian forces
in what soon became a civil war. In July 1992, UN and other international peacekeeping forces
intervened, provoking a backlash from Moscow. Conservative and nationalist factions in the
Russian parliament protested that Russia had not been suitably consulted in spite of its
historic interests in the Balkans. Russia's relations with its neighborhood immediately took on
a harsher tone.
The term "near abroad" was introduced by Foreign Minister Kozyrev and other Russian
officials to describe the former Soviet states on Russia's borders. Government reports were
produced on ways of safeguarding Russian interests in these states. 26 At an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) meeting in Stockholm in December 1992, Kozyrev offered a version of a speech to his
counterparts that clearly captured a new mood in Moscow. He outlined an assertive Russian
foreign policy, reaffirming Russia's traditional support for Serbia, laying claim to the entire
former Soviet space, and reserving Russia's right to exert influence through military as well
as economic means. 27 By this time, the Russian parliament's
backlash to shock therapy was in full swing. There was a general perception, in both the
Yeltsin government and parliament, that Russia was being treated as a developing or second-tier
country by the West. Despite repeated promises of substantial financial aid, the United States
and international financial institutions had been unable to provide sufficient assistance to
alleviate the most severe effects of Russia's economic reforms. 28 The disillusioned Yeltsin government increasingly turned its
foreign policy attention away from the West and toward the new states of the former Soviet
Union -- trying to salvage what was left of Moscow's previous regional authority.
REBUFFED IN THE NEAR ABROAD
Yeltsin's overtures for closer relations were soon rebuffed in the near abroad. After the
collapse of the USSR, the Yeltsin team thought it had created a mechanism for some form of
post-Soviet regional reintegration under Russian leadership through the creation of the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Nothing went quite according to plan. Most CIS member
states saw the organization either as a means for heading off nasty Yugoslav-style conflicts,
or as the beginning of a mutual civilized divorce. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania -- which the USSR had annexed during World War II in an act that the UN declared
illegal -- refused to join the CIS. They set their sights instead on membership in the European
Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Georgia also initially refused.
Moldova and Azerbaijan agreed only to associate membership. Ukraine, the most important of the
other former Soviet republics, joined the CIS but clashed with Russia over dividing the former
Soviet Black Sea Fleet -- based in Sevastopol on Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula. 29
Then fighting broke out between several new states and various separatist territorial
entities, pulling Moscow into the fray. Armed clashes flared between Azerbaijan and the ethnic
Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh. Across the border from Azerbaijan, Georgia fought with
two of its autonomous regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In Moldova, violence erupted between
forces loyal to the new government and the secessionist Transnistria region. Troops from the
Soviet 14th Army stationed in Transnistria intervened. General Alexander Lebed, commander of
the 14th Army, burst into the national spotlight with his efforts to separate the sides and
secure Russian military installations and weapons stockpiles. Further afield, in Central Asia,
Tajikistan fell into civil war. 30
The ethno-political violence in the Soviet successor states was exacerbated by Moscow's
confrontation with Estonia and Latvia over the status of post-war Russian-speaking immigrants.
Both states introduced legislation demanding that those immigrants fulfill residence and
language requirements before they could apply for citizenship. In November 1992, the UN adopted
a resolution calling for Moscow to withdraw all former Soviet troops from the Baltic states,
given their illegal annexation. The Yeltsin government tried to link the troop withdrawal
demanded by the UN to its dispute with the Baltic states. If the immigrants were given
citizenship, the troops would be withdrawn; otherwise they would stay until the issue was
resolved. In September 1993 at the United Nations General Assembly, Foreign Minister Kozyrev
dug in Moscow's heels even further. He declared Russia's "special responsibility" for
protecting Russian language speakers (including in Transnistria and the Baltic states) and
demanded the UN grant Russia primacy in future peacekeeping missions sent into former Soviet
republics. 31 These efforts were to no avail. Sustained Western
pressure, including specific threats to withhold loans vital for Russia's economic reform
program, ultimately forced Moscow's hand. The last former Soviet soldier was out of the Baltic
states by August 31, 1994. 32
Elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, Moscow did its best to retain whatever leverage it
could. In the Caucasus, Russian operatives and weaponry were used in conflicts and coups
against perceived anti-Russian leaders. Economic pressure was deployed against Ukraine and the
Central Asian states in a variety of disputes. A Moscow-encouraged Crimean independence
movement impinged on Ukraine's claims to the Black Sea Fleet. By September 1995, the CIS and
the near abroad had become the priority area for Russian foreign policy and the focal point of
its principal vital interests. President Yeltsin signed a decree on the integration of the CIS,
which set ambitious goals for enhancing economic, political, and military ties. 33 When he came into office in 1999–2000, Putin would
continue to emphasize the importance of Russia's relations with the former Soviet republics and
of maintaining Moscow's grip on the various levers of influence over them. He also took away
some critical lessons from Russia's experience of being ousted (in his view) ignominiously from
the Baltic states in August 1994.
VEERING FROM WEST TO EAST
At the time, none of the Yeltsin government's actions were seen by the political and
military elite in Moscow to have appreciably improved Russia's international standing. The
conflicts dominated Russia's domestic and foreign policy agenda. Relations with the United
States and the West degenerated. In 1994, the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina escalated,
culminating in punitive actions against Serbia by the EU and the United States, and then NATO
air strikes. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and President Yeltsin were informed of the
air attacks after the NATO allies had already made the decision. Although NATO later worked out
an arrangement for Russian troops to serve in a NATO peacekeeping contingent in Bosnia under
their own command, Russia's parliament was, once again, infuriated. Concurrent with the action
in the Balkans, NATO's 1994 decision to expand the alliance to the new democracies of Eastern
Europe, and by extension to former Soviet republics such as the Baltic states, was protested by
all Russian political factions. Between 1994 and 1997, the expansion of NATO dominated Russia's
interactions with the West.
In an interview in the Moscow News in September 1995, former Soviet
President Mikhail Gorbachev summed up the general elite consensus in Moscow. 34 The West had taken advantage of Russia's weakness. The West's
policy in Europe, the Balkans, and within the former Soviet Union, he asserted, "is marked by a
clear disrespect for Russia, as is shown by its failure to consult Russia on the issue of NATO
bombings [in Yugoslavia] . All this proves that some Western politicians would have liked to
see Russia play second fiddle in world politics . Whatever Russia's domestic problems, it will
never reconcile itself to such a humiliating position." 35
Gorbachev insisted that Russia "badly need[ed] a meaningful policy on the international
scene, a policy aimed at restoring the security system in Europe and Russia's role as a top
player in world politics." He also urged a change in Western policies in Russia's former
spheres of influence, warning that "an arrogant attitude towards Russia and her interests is
deeply insulting to the Russian people, and that is fraught with grave consequences."
36
Not long after Gorbachev's interview, President Yeltsin replaced Foreign Minister Kozyrev in
January 1996 with the former head of Russian foreign intelligence and Middle East specialist
Yevgeny Primakov. Humiliated and insulted in the West, Moscow made foreign policy overtures
toward former Soviet allies in Asia and the Middle East -- again with the urging of factions
within the parliament and government. Primakov's appointment marked the beginning of
initiatives aimed at rebuilding Russia's relations with China, India, Iraq, Iran, and other
powers the USSR had previously courted. There was little further talk of partnership with the
United States.
MOUNTING DEMANDS FOR THE RESTORATION OF THE STATE: PUTIN COMES TO MOSCOW
This is when Putin came to Moscow to join the Russian presidential administration. Between
1991 and 1996, Russian domestic and foreign policy had endured a long series of humiliating
setbacks. Russian politicians were at each other's throats. Yeltsin had shelled the Russian
parliament but had not forced it into complete submission. New political opposition forces and
the oligarchs had been emboldened by their roles in the June 1996 presidential election
campaign. The government's progressive economic reform program was in tatters, and its team of
economic reformers was in disarray. The economy was in full-blown recession. Tens of thousands
had taken to the streets to demand unpaid wages and pensions and to protest rising prices. War
had ravaged Chechnya and pulled it even further away from Moscow's orbit. Regional leaders were
picking apart the Russian Federation, treaty by treaty. NATO had denied Russia its traditional
role in the Balkan conflicts. The West had pushed Russia out of the Baltic states. Ukraine and
other putative allies in the near abroad were fighting over the Soviet spoils -- with Moscow
and among themselves. Relations with the United States were on a downward trajectory. CHAPTER THREETHE STATIST
WHEN PUTIN ARRIVED IN MOSCOW in August 1996, few in Russian elite
circles had any illusions about the depth of the state's domestic crisis and the loss of its
previous great-power status internationally. Many internal observers feared Russia was in
danger of total collapse. They bristled at Western commentators constantly regurgitating a
description of the country during the late Soviet period as "Upper Volta with missiles."
1 Russian politics was focused on preserving what was left and
avoiding further humiliations. Practically every political group and party across the Russian
political spectrum, from right to left, felt that the post-Soviet dismantling of the state had
gone too far and advocated the restoration of Russian "state power." Even some of the liberal
economists around Yegor Gaidar who were at the forefront of pulling apart the old Soviet
economy in 1992–93 had moved in this direction. 2
Everything Putin has said on the subject of saving Russia from chaos since he came to power
is consistent with the general elite consensus in the late 1990s on the importance of restoring
order. Most of the Russian domestic and foreign policy priorities that Putin would adopt when
he became president were already identified by the Russian political elite in the same period.
All Vladimir Putin had to do in the 2000s was to channel and synthesize the various ideas
percolating through newspaper columns and political manifestos about how to address Russia's
crisis of statehood to produce what has loosely been referred to as "Putinism." This included
the re-creation of a more authoritative centralized state apparatus -- the so-called
vertikal vlasti or "vertical of power" -- and greater assertiveness in
foreign policy, especially in the near abroad and other areas where Russia had experienced its
greatest setbacks under Boris Yeltsin. 3 Although Putin was short
on the specifics of what he would actually do at the outset of his presidency, he would
ultimately derive most of his ideas for action from some of the more conservative factions in
the 1990s political debates.
THE "MILLENNIUM MESSAGE"
The first key to Vladimir Putin's personality is his view of himself as a man of the state,
his identity as a statist ( gosudarstvennik in Russian). Putin sees
himself as someone who belongs to a large cohort of people demanding the restoration of the
state. Vladimir Putin publicly presented himself as a statist and offered his vision for the
restoration of the Russian state in one of his first major political statements and
presentations just before he became acting Russian president. This statement sets the scene for
Putin's time as both president and prime minister. As a result, we need to examine the specific
connotations of being a statist in the Russian context of the 1990s.
On December 29, 1999, the website of the Russian government posted a 5,000-word treatise
under the signature of then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Its title was "Russia on the
Threshold of the New Millennium." Two days later, the president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin,
appeared on national television to declare that he was resigning and handing over power to
Putin. The Internet treatise became known as the "Millennium Message." It was Vladimir Putin's
political mission statement or manifesto for the beginning of his presidency, and it provides
the overall framework for understanding the system of governance he has created around him.
One of Putin's main points in his manifesto was that throughout history, the Russian state
lost its status when its people were divided, when Russians lost sight of the common values
that united them and distinguished them from all others. Since the fall of communism, Putin
asserted, Russians had embraced personal rights and freedoms, freedom of personal expression,
freedom to travel abroad. These universal values were fine, but they were not "Russian." Nor
would they be enough to ensure Russia's survival. There were other, distinctly Russian values
that were at the core of what Putin called the "Russian Idea." Those values were patriotism,
collectivism, solidarity, derzhavnost' -- the belief that Russia is
destined always to be a great power ( derzhava ) exerting its
influence abroad -- and the untranslatable gosudarstvennichestvo .
Russia is not America or Britain with their historical liberal traditions, Putin went
on:
For us, the state and its institutions and structures have always played an exceptionally
important role in the life of the country and the people. For Russians, a strong state is not
an anomaly to fight against. Quite the contrary, it is the source and guarantor of order, the
initiator and the main driving force of any change . Society desires the restoration of the
guiding and regulating role of the state. 4
Putin promised to restore that role. He declared himself to be a gosudarstvennik , a builder of the state, a servant of the state. A gosudarstvennik , a person who believes that Russia must be and must have a strong
state, has a particular resonance in Russia. It does not imply someone who engages in politics.
A gosudarstvennik is not a politician driven by a set of distinct
beliefs who represents a certain group or constituency and jumps into the fray to run for
political office. Instead, the term refers to someone who is selected or self-selects to serve
the country on a permanent basis and who believes only in the state itself.
The MSM is reporting the "impeachment" as if it was a serious (approved by expert
academics) endeavor. However, the veil is lifting. The revealed face of the ruling class is
Neo-Orwellian.
"Nadler's committee will likely vote to impeach Trump. In a report defining what it
considers impeachable offenses, the committee states that even if Trump did not actually
break any laws in his supposed "quid pro quo" dealings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelensky, he can still be impeached for his unstated motives.
"The question is not whether the president's conduct could have resulted from
permissible motives. It is whether the president's real reasons, the ones in his mind at the
time, were legitimate, " it stated."
About the author
Imran Bashir has an M.Sc. in Information Security from Royal Holloway, University of London, and has a background in software development,
solution architecture, infrastructure management, and IT service management. He is also a member of the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the British Computer Society (BCS). Imran has sixteen years' of experience in the public and financial
sectors.
He worked on large scale IT projects in the public sector before moving to the financial services industry. Since then,
he has worked in various technical roles for different financial companies in Europe's financial capital, London. He is currently
working for an investment bank in London as Vice President in the Technology department.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Mastering Blockchain Second Edition
Packt Upsell
Why subscribe?
PacktPub.com
Contributors
About the author
About the reviewer
Packt is searching for authors like you
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Download the example code files
Download the color images
Conventions used
Get in touch
Reviews
Blockchain 101
The growth of blockchain technology
Distributed systems
The history of blockchain and Bitcoin
Electronic cash
Blockchain
Blockchain defined
Peer-to-peer
Distributed ledger
Cryptographically-secure
Append-only
Updateable via consensus
Generic elements of a blockchain
How blockchain works
How blockchain accumulates blocks
Benefits and limitations of blockchain
Tiers of blockchain technology
Features of a blockchain
Types of blockchain
Distributed ledgers
Distributed Ledger Technology
Public blockchains
Private blockchains
Semiprivate blockchains
Sidechains
Permissioned ledger
Shared ledger
Fully private and proprietary blockchains
Tokenized blockchains
Tokenless blockchains
Consensus
Consensus mechanism
Types of consensus mechanisms
Consensus in blockchain
CAP theorem and blockchain
Summary
Decentralization
Decentralization using blockchain
Methods of decentralization
Disintermediation
Contest-driven decentralization
Routes to decentralization
How to decentralize
The decentralization framework example
Blockchain and full ecosystem decentralization
Storage
Communication
Computing power and decentralization
Smart contracts
Decentralized Organizations
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations
Decentralized Autonomous Corporations
Decentralized Autonomous Societies
Decentralized Applications (DApps)
Requirements of a Decentralized Application
Operations of a DApp
DApp examples
KYC-Chain
OpenBazaar
Lazooz
Platforms for decentralization
Ethereum
MaidSafe
Lisk
Summary
Symmetric Cryptography
Working with the OpenSSL command line
Introduction
Mathematics
Set
Group
Field
A finite field
Order
An abelian group
Prime fields
Ring
A cyclic group
Modular arithmetic
Cryptography
Confidentiality
Integrity
Authentication
Entity authentication
Data origin authentication
Non-repudiation
Accountability
Cryptographic primitives
Symmetric cryptography
Stream ciphers
Block ciphers
Block encryption mode
Electronic Code Book
Cipher Block Chaining
Counter mode
Keystream generation mode
Message authentication mode
Cryptographic hash mode
Data Encryption Standard
Advanced Encryption Standard
How AES works
Summary
Public Key Cryptography
Asymmetric cryptography
Integer factorization
Discrete logarithm
Elliptic curves
Public and private keys
RSA
Encryption and decryption using RSA
Elliptic Curve Cryptography
Mathematics behind ECC
Point addition
Point doubling
Discrete logarithm problem in ECC
RSA using OpenSSL
RSA public and private key pair
Private key
Public key
Exploring the public key
Encryption and decryption
Encryption
Decryption
ECC using OpenSSL
ECC private and public key pair
Private key
Private key generation
Hash functions
Compression of arbitrary messages into fixed-length digest
Easy to compute
Preimage resistance
Second preimage resistance
Collision resistance
Message Digest
Secure Hash Algorithms
Design of Secure Hash Algorithms
Design of SHA-256
Design of SHA-3 (Keccak)
OpenSSL example of hash functions
Message Authentication Codes
MACs using block ciphers
Hash-based MACs
Merkle trees
Patricia trees
Distributed Hash Tables
Digital signatures
RSA digital signature algorithm
Sign then encrypt
Encrypt then sign
Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm
How to generate a digital signature using OpenSSL
ECDSA using OpenSSL
Homomorphic encryption
Signcryption
Zero-Knowledge Proofs
Blind signatures
Encoding schemes
Financial markets and trading
Trading
Exchanges
Orders and order properties
Order management and routing systems
Components of a trade
The underlying instrument
General attributes
Economics
Sales
Counterparty
Trade life cycle
Order anticipators
Market manipulation
Summary
Introducing Bitcoin
Bitcoin
Bitcoin definition
Bitcoin – a bird's-eye view
Sending a payment to someone
Digital keys and addresses
Private keys in Bitcoin
Public keys in Bitcoin
Addresses in Bitcoin
Base58Check encoding
Vanity addresses
Multisignature addresses
Transactions
The transaction life cycle
Transaction fee
Transaction pools
The transaction data structure
Metadata
Inputs
Outputs
Verification
The script language
Commonly used opcodes
Types of transactions
Coinbase transactions
Contracts
Transaction verification
Transaction malleability
Blockchain
The structure of a block
The structure of a block header
The genesis block
Mining
Tasks of the miners
Mining rewards
Proof of Work (PoW)
The mining algorithm
The hash rate
Mining systems
CPU
GPU
FPGA
ASICs
Mining pools
Summary
Bitcoin Network and Payments
The Bitcoin network
Wallets
Non-deterministic wallets
Deterministic wallets
Hierarchical Deterministic wallets
Brain wallets
Paper wallets
Hardware wallets
Online wallets
Mobile wallets
Bitcoin payments
Innovation in Bitcoin
Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs)
Advanced protocols
Segregated Witness (SegWit)
Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin Unlimited
Bitcoin Gold
Bitcoin investment and buying and selling bitcoins
Summary
Bitcoin Clients and APIs
Bitcoin installation
Types of Bitcoin Core clients
Bitcoind
Bitcoin-cli
Bitcoin-qt
Setting up a Bitcoin node
Setting up the source code
Setting up bitcoin.conf
Starting up a node in testnet
Starting up a node in regtest
Experimenting with Bitcoin-cli
Bitcoin programming and the command-line interface
Summary
Alternative Coins
Theoretical foundations
Alternatives to Proof of Work
Proof of Storage
Proof of Stake (PoS)
Various stake types
Proof of coinage
Proof of Deposit (PoD)
Proof of Burn
Proof of Activity (PoA)
Nonoutsourceable puzzles
Difficulty adjustment and retargeting algorithms
Kimoto Gravity Well
Dark Gravity Wave
DigiShield
MIDAS
Bitcoin limitations
Privacy and anonymity
Mixing protocols
Third-party mixing protocols
Inherent anonymity
Extended protocols on top of Bitcoin
Colored coins
Counterparty
Development of altcoins
Consensus algorithms
Hashing algorithms
Difficulty adjustment algorithms
Inter-block time
Block rewards
Reward halving rate
Block size and transaction size
Interest rate
Coinage
Total supply of coins
Namecoin
Trading Namecoins
Obtaining Namecoins
Generating Namecoin records
Litecoin
Primecoin
Trading Primecoin
Mining guide
Zcash
Trading Zcash
Mining guide
Address generation
GPU mining
Downloading and compiling nheqminer
Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)
ERC20 tokens
Summary
Smart Contracts
History
Definition
Ricardian contracts
Smart contract templates
Oracles
Smart Oracles
Deploying smart contracts on a blockchain
The DAO
Summary
Ethereum 101
Introduction
The yellow paper
Useful mathematical symbols
Ethereum blockchain
Ethereum – bird's eye view
The Ethereum network
Mainnet
Testnet
Private net
Components of the Ethereum ecosystem
Keys and addresses
Accounts
Types of accounts
Transactions and messages
Contract creation transaction
Message call transaction
Messages
Calls
Transaction validation and execution
The transaction substate
State storage in the Ethereum blockchain
The world state
The account state
Transaction receipts
Ether cryptocurrency / tokens (ETC and ETH)
The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)
Execution environment
Machine state
The iterator function
Smart contracts
Native contracts
Summary
Further Ethereum
Programming languages
Runtime bytecode
Opcodes and their meaning
Arithmetic operations
Logical operations
Cryptographic operations
Environmental information
Block information
Stack, memory, storage, and flow operations
Push operations
Duplication operations
Exchange operations
Logging operations
System operations
Blocks and blockchain
The genesis block
The block validation mechanism
Block finalization
Block difficulty
Gas
Fee schedule
Forks in the blockchain
Nodes and miners
The consensus mechanism
Ethash
CPU mining
GPU mining
Benchmarking
Mining rigs
Mining pools
Wallets and client software
Geth
Eth
Pyethapp
Parity
Light clients
Installation
Eth installation
Mist browser
Geth
The geth console
Funding the account with bitcoin
Parity installation
Creating accounts using the parity command line
APIs, tools, and DApps
Applications (DApps and DAOs) developed on Ethereum
Tools
Supporting protocols
Whisper
Swarm
Scalability, security, and other challenges
Trading and investment
Summary
Ethereum Development Environment
Test networks
Setting up a private net
Network ID
The genesis file
Data directory
Flags and their meaning
Static nodes
Starting up the private network
Running Mist on private net
Deploying contracts using Mist
Block explorer for private net / local Ethereum block explorer
Summary
Development Tools and Frameworks
Languages
Compilers
Solidity compiler (solc)
Installation on Linux
Installation on macOS
Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)
Remix
Tools and libraries
Node version 7
EthereumJS
Ganache
MetaMask
Truffle
Installation
Contract development and deployment
Writing
Testing
Solidity language
Types
Value types
Boolean
Integers
Address
Literals
Integer literals
String literals
Hexadecimal literals
Enums
Function types
Internal functions
External functions
Reference types
Arrays
Structs
Data location
Mappings
Global variables
Control structures
Events 
Inheritance
Libraries
Functions
Layout of a Solidity source code file
Version pragma
Import
Comments
Summary
Introducing Web3
Web3
Contract deployment
POST requests
The HTML and JavaScript frontend
Installing web3.js
Example
Creating a web3 object
Checking availability by calling any web3 method
Contract functions
Development frameworks
Truffle
Initializing Truffle
Interaction with the contract
Another example
An example project – Proof of Idea
Oracles
Deployment on decentralized storage using IPFS
Installing IPFS
Distributed ledgers
Summary
Hyperledger
Projects under Hyperledger
Fabric
Sawtooth Lake
Iroha
Burrow
Indy
Explorer
Cello
Composer
Quilt
Hyperledger as a protocol
The reference architecture
Requirements and design goals of Hyperledger Fabric
The modular approach
Privacy and confidentiality
Scalability
Deterministic transactions
Identity
Auditability
Interoperability
Portability
Rich data queries
Fabric
Hyperledger Fabric
Membership services
Blockchain services
Consensus services
Distributed ledger
The peer to peer protocol
Ledger storage
Chaincode services
Components of the fabric
Peers
Orderer nodes
Clients
Channels
World state database
Transactions
Membership Service Provider (MSP)
Smart contracts
Crypto service provider
Applications on blockchain
Chaincode implementation
The application model
Consensus in Hyperledger Fabric
The transaction life cycle in Hyperledger Fabric
Sawtooth Lake
PoET
Transaction families
Consensus in Sawtooth
The development environment – Sawtooth Lake
Corda
Architecture
State objects
Transactions
Consensus
Flows
Components
Nodes
The permissioning service
Network map service
Notary service
Oracle service
Transactions
Vaults
CorDapp
The development environment – Corda
Summary
Alternative Blockchains
Blockchains
Kadena
Ripple
Transactions
Payments related
Order related
Account and security-related
Interledger
Application layer
Transport layer
Interledger layer
Ledger layer
Stellar
Rootstock
Sidechain
Drivechain
Quorum
Transaction manager
Crypto Enclave
QuorumChain
Network manager
Tezos
Storj
MaidSafe
BigchainDB
MultiChain
Tendermint
Tendermint Core
Tendermint Socket Protocol (TMSP)
Platforms and frameworks
Eris
Summary
Blockchain – Outside of Currencies
Internet of Things
Physical object layer
Device layer
Network layer
Management layer
Application layer
IoT blockchain experiment
First node setup
Raspberry Pi node setup
Installing Node.js
Circuit
Government
Border control
Voting
Citizen identification (ID cards)
Miscellaneous
Health
Finance
Insurance
Post-trade settlement
Financial crime prevention
Media
Summary
Scalability and Other Challenges
Scalability
Network plane
Consensus plane
Storage plane
View plane
Block size increase
Block interval reduction
Invertible Bloom Lookup Tables
Sharding
State channels
Private blockchain
Proof of Stake
Sidechains
Subchains
Tree chains (trees)
Block propagation
Bitcoin-NG
Plasma
Privacy
Indistinguishability Obfuscation
Homomorphic encryption
Zero-Knowledge Proofs
State channels
Secure multiparty computation
Usage of hardware to provide confidentiality
CoinJoin
Confidential transactions
MimbleWimble
Security
Smart contract security
Formal verification and analysis
Oyente tool
Summary
Current Landscape and What's Next
Emerging trends
Application-specific blockchains (ASBCs)
Enterprise-grade blockchains
Private blockchains
Start-ups
Strong research interest
Standardization
Enhancements
Real-world implementations
Consortia
Answers to technical challenges
Convergence
Education of blockchain technology
Employment
Cryptoeconomics
Research in cryptography
New programming languages
Hardware research and development
Research in formal methods and security
Alternatives to blockchains
Interoperability efforts
Blockchain as a Service
Efforts to reduce electricity consumption
Other challenges
Regulation
Dark side
Blockchain research
Smart contracts
Centralization issues
Limitations in cryptographic functions
Consensus algorithms
Scalability
Code obfuscation
Notable projects
Zcash on Ethereum
CollCo
Cello
Qtum
Bitcoin-NG
Solidus
Hawk
Town-Crier
SETLCoin
TEEChan
Falcon
Bletchley
Casper
Miscellaneous tools
Solidity extension for Microsoft Visual Studio
MetaMask
Stratis
Embark
DAPPLE
Meteor
uPort
INFURA
Convergence with other industries
Future
Summary
Another Book You May Enjoy
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Preface This book has one goal, to introduce theoretical and practical aspects of the blockchain technology. This book contains
all material that is necessary to become a blockchain technical expert. Since the publication of the first edition of this book,
a lot has changed and progressed further with regards to blockchain; therefore, a need to update the book has arisen. The multitude
of benefits envisaged by the implementation of blockchain technology has sparked profound interest among researchers from academia
and industry who are tirelessly researching this technology. As a result, many consortia, working groups, projects, and professional
bodies have emerged, which are involved in the development and further advancement of this technology. The second edition of this
book will provide in-depth insights into decentralization, smart contracts, and various blockchain platforms such as Ethereum, Bitcoin,
and Hyperledger Fabric. After reading this book, readers will be able to develop a deep understanding of inner workings of the blockchain
technology and will be able to develop blockchain applications. This book covers all topics relevant to the blockchain technology,
including cryptography, cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and various other platforms and tools used for blockchain development.
It is recommended that readers have a basic understanding of computer science and basic programming experience to benefit fully from
this book. However, if that is not the case then still this book can be read easily, as relevant background material is provided
where necessary. Who this book is for This book is for anyone who wants to understand blockchain in depth. It can also be
used as a reference by developers who are developing applications for blockchain. Also, this book can be used as a textbook for courses
related to blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. It can also be used as a learning resource for various examinations and certifications
related to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. What this book coversChapter 1 , Blockchain 101 , introduces
the basic concepts of distributed computing on which blockchain technology is based. It also covers history, definitions, features,
types, and benefits of blockchains along with various consensus mechanisms that are at the core of the blockchain technology.
Chapter 2 , Decentralization , covers the concept of decentralization and its relationship with blockchain technology.
Various methods and platforms that can be used to decentralize a process or a system have also been introduced. Chapter 3
, Symmetric Cryptography , introduces the theoretical foundations of symmetric cryptography, which is necessary to understand
that how various security services such as confidentiality and integrity are provided. Chapter 4 , Public Key Cryptography
, introduces concepts such as public and private keys, digital signatures and hash functions with practical examples. Finally, an
introduction to financial markets is also included as there are many interesting use cases for blockchain technology in the financial
sector. Chapter 5 , Introducing Bitcoin , covers Bitcoin, the first and largest blockchain. It introduces technical
concepts related to bitcoin cryptocurrency in detail. Chapter 6 , Bitcoin Network and Payments , covers Bitcoin network,
relevant protocols and various Bitcoin wallets. Moreover, advanced protocols, Bitcoin trading and payments is also introduced.
Chapter 7 , Bitcoin Clients and APIs , introduces various Bitcoin clients and programming APIs that can be used to
build Bitcoin applications. Chapter 8 , Alternative Coins , introduces alternative cryptocurrencies that were introduced
after the invention of Bitcoin. It also presents examples of different altcoins, their properties, and how they have been developed
and implemented. Chapter 9 , Smart Contracts , provides an in-depth discussion on smart contracts. Topics such as
history, the definition of smart contracts, Ricardian contracts, Oracles, and the theoretical aspects of smart contracts are presented
in this chapter. Chapter 10 , Ethereum 101 , introduces the design and architecture of the Ethereum blockchain in
detail. It covers various technical concepts related to the Ethereum blockchain that explains the underlying principles, features,
and components of this platform in depth. Chapter 11 , Further Ethereum , continues the introduction of Ethereum
from pervious chapter and covers topics related to Ethereum Virtual Machine, mining and supporting protocols for Ethereum. Chapter
12 , Ethereum Development Environment , covers the topics related to setting up private networks for Ethereum smart contract
development and programming. Chapter 13 , Development Tools and Frameworks , provides a detailed practical introduction
to the Solidity programming language and different relevant tools and frameworks that are used for Ethereum development. Chapter
14 , Introducing Web3 , covers development of decentralized applications and smart contracts using the Ethereum blockchain.
A detailed introduction to Web3 API is provided along with multiple practical examples and a final project. Chapter 15 ,
Hyperledger , presents a discussion about the Hyperledger project from the Linux Foundation, which includes different blockchain
projects introduced by its members. Chapter 16 , Alternative Blockchains , introduces alternative blockchain solutions
and platforms. It provides technical details and features of alternative blockchains and relevant platforms. Chapter 17
, Blockchain – Outside of Currencies , provides a practical and detailed introduction to applications of blockchain technology
in fields others than cryptocurrencies, including Internet of Things, government, media, and finance. Chapter 18 , Scalability
and Other Challenges , is dedicated to a discussion of the challenges faced by blockchain technology and how to address them.
Chapter 19 , Current Landscape and What's Next , is aimed at providing information about the current landscape, projects,
and research efforts related to blockchain technology. Also, some predictions based on the current state of blockchain technology
have also been made. To get the most out of this book
All examples in this book have been developed on Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS (Xenial) and macOS version 10.13.2. As such, it is recommended
to use Ubuntu or any other Unix like system. However, any appropriate operating system, either Windows or Linux, can be used,
but examples, especially those related to installation, may need to be changed accordingly.
Examples related to cryptography have been developed using the OpenSSL 1.0.2g 1 Mar 2016 command-line tool.
Ethereum Solidity examples have been developed using Remix IDE, available online at https://remix.ethereum.org
Ethereum Byzantine release is used to develop Ethereum-related examples. At the time of writing, this is the latest version
available and can be downloaded from https://www.ethereum.org/ .
Examples related to IoT have been developed using a Raspberry Pi kit by Vilros, but any aapropriate latest model or kit can
be used. Specifically, Raspberry Pi 3 Model B V 1.2 has been used to build the hardware example of IoT. Node.js V8.9.3 and npm
V5.5.1 have been used to download related packages and run Node js server for IoT examples.
The Truffle framework has been used in some examples of smart contract deployment, and is available at http://truffleframework.com/
. Any latest version available via npm should be appropriate.
Download the example code files You can download the example code files for this book from your account at www.packtpub.com
. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly
to you. You can download the code files by following these steps:
Log in or register at www.packtpub.com .
Select the SUPPORT tab.
Click on Code Downloads & Errata.
Enter the name of the book in the Search box and follow the onscreen instructions.
Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:
WinRAR/7-Zip for Windows
Zipeg/iZip/UnRarX for Mac
7-Zip/PeaZip for Linux
The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Mastering-Blockchain-Second-Edition
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it here: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/MasteringBlockchainSecondEdition_ColorImages.pdf . Conventions
used There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book. CodeInText : Indicates code words
in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles.
Here is an example: "After executing the command, a file named privatekey.pem is produced, which contains the
generated private key as follows." A block of code is set as follows:
pragma solidity ^0.4.0;
contract TestStruct {
struct Trade
{
uint tradeid;
uint quantity;
uint price;
string trader;
}
//This struct can be initialized and used as below
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
$ sudo apt-get install solc
Bold : Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear
in the text like this. Here is an example: "Enter the password and click on SEND TRANSACTION to deploy the contract."
Warnings or important notes appear like this.
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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we at Packt can understand what you think about our products, and our authors can see your feedback on their book. Thank you! For
more information about Packt, please visit packtpub.com . Blockchain 101 If you are reading this book, it is very
likely that you already have heard about blockchain and have some fundamental appreciation of its enormous potential. If not, then
let me tell you that this is a technology that has promised to positively alter the existing paradigms of nearly all industries including,
but not limited to IT, finance, government, media, medical, and law. This chapter serves an introduction to blockchain technology,
its technical foundations, the theory behind it, and various techniques that have been combined together to build what is known today
as blockchain. In this chapter, we first describe the theoretical foundations of distributed systems. Next, we address the precursors
of Bitcoin by which blockchain technology was introduced to the world. Finally, we introduce you to blockchain technology. This approach
is a logical way to understanding blockchain technology, as the roots of blockchain are in distributed systems. We will cover a lot
of ground quickly here, but don't worry -- we will go over a great deal of this material in much greater detail as you move through
the book. The growth of blockchain technology With the invention of Bitcoin in 2008, the world was introduced to a new concept,
which is now likely to revolutionize the whole of society. It is something that promises to have an impact on every industry, including
but not limited to the financial sector, government, media, law, and arts. Some describe blockchain as a revolution, whereas another
school of thought believes that it is going to be more evolutionary, and it will take many years before any practical benefits of
blockchain reach fruition. This thinking is correct to some extent, but in my opinion, the revolution has already begun. Many prominent
organizations all around the world are already writing proofs of concept using blockchain technology, as its disruptive potential
has now been fully recognized. However, some organizations are still in the preliminary exploration stage, though they are expected
to progress more quickly as the technology matures. It is a technology that has an impact on current technologies too and possesses
the ability to change them at a fundamental level. If we look at the last few years, we notice that in 2013 some ideas started to
emerge that suggested usage of blockchain in other areas than cryptocurrencies. Around that time the primary usage of blockchain
was cryptocurrencies, and many new coins emerged during that time. The following graph shows a broad-spectrum outline of year wise
progression and adaption trend of blockchain technology. Years shown on the x axis indicate the range of time in which a specific
phase of blockchain technology falls. Each phase has a name which represents the action and is shown on the x axis starting
from the period of IDEAS & THOUGHTS to eventually MATURITY & FURTHER STANDARDIZATION . The y axis shows level of activity,
involvement and adoption of blockchain technology. The graph shows that eventually, roughly around 2025 blockchain technology is
expected to become mature with a high number of users. Blockchain technology adoption and maturity The preceding graph shows that
in 2013 IDEAS & THOUGHTS emerged related to other usages of blockchain technology apart from cryptocurrencies. Then in 2014 some
RESEARCH & EXPERIMENTATION started which led to PROOF OF CONCEPTS , FURTHER RESEARCH , and full-scale TRIAL PROJECTS between 2015
and 2017. In 2018 we will see REAL WORLD IMPLEMENTATIONS . Already many projects are underway and set to replace existing systems,
for example, Australian Securities Exchange ( ASX ) is soon to become the first organization to replace its legacy clearing and settlement
system with blockchain technology.
More information on this topic can be found at https://www.asx.com.au/services/chess-replacement.htm .
It is expected that during 2019 more research will be carried out along with some interest towards regulation and standardization
of blockchain technology. After this, production ready projects and off the shelf products utilizing blockchain technology will be
available from 2020 and by 2021 mainstream usage of blockchain technology is expected to start. Progress in blockchain technology
almost feels like the internet dot-com boom of the late 1990s. More research is expected to continue along with adaption and
further maturity of blockchain technology, and finally, in 2025 it is expected that the technology will be mature enough to be used
on day to day basis. Please note that the timelines provided in the chart are not strict and can vary as it is quite difficult to
predict that when exactly blockchain technology will become mature. This graph is based on the progress made in the recent years
and the current climate of research, interest and enthusiasm regarding this technology which suggests that by 2025 blockchain technology
is expected to become mature. Interest in blockchain technology has risen quite significantly over the last few years. Once dismissed
as simply geek money from a cryptocurrency point of view, or as something that was just not considered worth pursuing, blockchain
is now being researched by the largest companies and organizations around the world. Millions of dollars are being spent to adapt
and experiment with this technology. This is evident from recent actions taken by European Union where they have announced plans
to increase funding for blockchain research to almost 340 million euros by 2020.
Interested readers can read more about this at https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/boost-for-blockchain-research-as-eu-increases-funding-four-fold-1.3383340
.
Another report suggests that global spending on blockchain technology research could reach 9.2 billion dollars by 2021.
More information regarding this can be found at https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/report-suggests-global-spending-blockchain-tech-could-reach-92-billion-2021/
.
There are various consortiums such as Enterprise Ethereum Alliance ( EEA ), Hyperledger , and R3 , which have been established for
research and development of blockchain technology. Moreover, a large number of start-ups are providing blockchain-based solutions
already. A simple trend search on Google reveals the immense scale of interest in blockchain technology over the last few years.
Especially, since early 2017 the increase in the search term blockchain is quite significant, as shown in the following graph:
Google trend graph for blockchain Various benefits of this technology are envisioned, such as decentralized trust, cost savings,
transparency, and efficiency. However, there are multiple challenges too that are an area of active research on blockchain, such
as scalability and privacy. In this book, we are going to see how blockchain technology can help bring about the benefits mentioned
earlier. You are going to learn about what exactly is blockchain technology, and how it can reshape businesses, multiple industries,
and indeed everyday life by bringing about a plenitude of benefits such as efficiency, cost saving, transparency, and security. We
will also explore what is distributed ledger technology, decentralization, and smart contracts and how technology solutions can be
developed and implemented using mainstream blockchain platforms such as Ethereum, and Hyperledger. We will also investigate that
what challenges need to be addressed before blockchain can become a mainstream technology. Chapter 18 , Scalability and
Other Challenges , is dedicated to a discussion of the limitations and challenges of blockchain technology. Distributed systems
Understanding distributed systems is essential to the understanding of blockchain technology, as blockchain is a distributed system
at its core. It is a distributed ledger which can be centralized or decentralized. A blockchain is originally intended to be and
is usually used as a decentralized platform. It can be thought of as a system that has properties of both decentralized and distributed
paradigms. It is a decentralized-distributed system. Distributed systems are a computing paradigm whereby two or more nodes work
with each other in a coordinated fashion to achieve a common outcome. It is modeled in such a way that end users see it as a single
logical platform. For example, Google's search engine is based on a large distributed system, but to a user, it looks like a single,
coherent platform. A node can be defined as an individual player in a distributed system. All nodes are capable of sending and receiving
messages to and from each other. Nodes can be honest, faulty, or malicious, and they have memory and a processor. A node that exhibits
irrational behavior is also known as a Byzantine node after the Byzantine Generals Problem.
The Byzantine Generals problem
In 1982, a thought experiment was proposed by Lamport and others in their research paper, The Byzantine Generals Problem
which is available at: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/byzantine-generals-problem/ whereby a group
of army generals who lead different parts of the Byzantine army are planning to attack or retreat from a city. The only way of
communicating among them is via a messenger. They need to agree to strike at the same time in order to win. The issue is that
one or more generals might be traitors who could send a misleading message. Therefore, there is a need for a viable mechanism
that allows for agreement among the generals, even in the presence of the treacherous ones, so that the attack can still take
place at the same time. As an analogy to distributed systems, the generals can be considered nodes, the traitors as Byzantine
(malicious) nodes, and the messenger can be thought of as a channel of communication among the generals.
This problem was solved in 1999 by Castro and Liskov who presented the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance ( PBFT ) algorithm,
where consensus is reached after a certain number of messages are received containing the same signed content.
This type of inconsistent behavior of Byzantine nodes can be intentionally malicious, which is detrimental to the operation of the
network. Any unexpected behavior by a node on the network, whether malicious or not, can be categorized as Byzantine. A small-scale
example of a distributed system is shown in the following diagram. This distributed system has six nodes out of which one ( N4 )
is a Byzantine node leading to possible data inconsistency. L2 is a link that is broken or slow, and this can lead to partition in
the network. Design of a distributed system: N4 is a Byzantine node, L2 is broken or a slow network link The primary challenge in
distributed system design is coordination between nodes and fault tolerance. Even if some of the nodes become faulty or network links
break, the distributed system should be able to tolerate this and continue to work to achieve the desired result. This problem has
been an active area of distributed system design research for many years, and several algorithms and mechanisms have been proposed
to overcome these issues. Distributed systems are so challenging to design that a hypothesis known as the CAP theorem has been proven,
which states that a distributed system cannot have all three of the much-desired properties simultaneously; that is, consistency,
availability, and partition tolerance. We will dive into the CAP theorem in more detail later in this chapter. The history of
blockchain and Bitcoin Blockchain was introduced with the invention of Bitcoin in 2008. Its practical implementation then occurred
in 2009. For the purposes of this chapter, it is sufficient to review Bitcoin very briefly, as it will be explored in great depth
in Chapter 5 , Introducing Bitcoin . However, it is essential to refer to Bitcoin because, without it, the history
of blockchain is not complete. Electronic cash The concept of electronic cash or digital currency is not new. Since the 1980s,
e-cash protocols have existed that are based on a model proposed by David Chaum. Just as understanding the concept of distributed
systems is necessary to comprehend blockchain technology, the idea of electronic cash is also essential in order to appreciate the
first and astonishingly successful application of blockchain, Bitcoin, or more broadly cryptocurrencies in general. Two fundamental
e-cash system issues need to be addressed: accountability and anonymity. Accountability is required to ensure that cash is spendable
only once (double-spend problem) and that it can only be spent by its rightful owner. Double spend problem arises when same money
can be spent twice. As it is quite easy to make copies of digital data, this becomes a big issue in digital currencies as you can
make many copies of same digital cash. Anonymity is required to protect users' privacy. As with physical cash, it is almost impossible
to trace back spending to the individual who actually paid the money. David Chaum solved both of these problems during his work in
1980s by using two cryptographic operations, namely blind signatures and secret sharing . These terminologies and related concepts
will be discussed in detail in Chapter 3 , Symmetric Cryptography and Chapter 4 , Public Key Cryptography
. For the moment, it is sufficient to say that blind signatures allow for signing a document without actually seeing it, and
secret sharing is a concept that enables the detection of double spending, that is using the same e-cash token twice (double
spending). In 2009, the first practical implementation of an electronic cash (e-cash) system named Bitcoin appeared. The term cryptocurrency
emerged later. For the very first time, it solved the problem of distributed consensus in a trustless network. It used public key
cryptography with a Proof of Work ( PoW ) mechanism to provide a secure, controlled, and decentralized method of minting digital
currency. The key innovation was the idea of an ordered list of blocks composed of transactions and cryptographically secured by
the PoW mechanism. This concept will be explained in greater detail in Chapter 5 , Introducing Bitcoin . Other technologies
used in Bitcoin, but which existed before its invention, include Merkle trees, hash functions, and hash chains. All these concepts
are explained in appropriate depth in Chapter 4 , Public Key Cryptography . Looking at all the technologies mentioned
earlier and their relevant history, it is easy to see how concepts from electronic cash schemes and distributed systems were combined
to create Bitcoin and what now is known as blockchain. This concept can also be visualized with the help of the following diagram:
The various ideas that supported the invention of Bitcoin and blockchain Blockchain In 2008, a groundbreaking paper entitled
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System was written on the topic of peer-to-peer electronic cash under the pseudonym
Satoshi Nakamoto . It introduced the term chain of blocks . No one knows the actual identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. After introducing
Bitcoin in 2009, he remained active in the Bitcoin developer community until 2011. He then handed over Bitcoin development to its
core developers and simply disappeared. Since then, there has been no communication from him whatsoever, and his existence and identity
are shrouded in mystery. The term chain of blocks evolved over the years into the word blockchain . As stated earlier,
blockchain technology incorporates a multitude of applications that can be implemented in various economic sectors. Particularly
in the finance sector, significant improvement in the performance of financial transactions and settlements is seen as resulting
in desirable time and cost reductions. Additional light will be shed on these aspects of blockchain in Chapter 17 , Blockchain
– Outside of Currencies where practical use cases will be discussed in detail for various industries. For now, it is sufficient
to say that parts of nearly all economic sectors have already realized the potential and promise of blockchain and have embarked,
or will do so soon, on the journey to capitalize on the benefits of blockchain technology. Blockchain defined
Layman's definition : Blockchain is an ever-growing, secure, shared record keeping system in which each user of the data holds
a copy of the records, which can only be updated if all parties involved in a transaction agree to update.
Technical definition : Blockchain is a peer-to-peer, distributed ledger that is cryptographically-secure, append-only, immutable
(extremely hard to change), and updateable only via consensus or agreement among peers.
Now let's examine the preceding definitions in more detail. We will look at all keywords in the definitions one by one. Peer-to-peer
The first keyword in the technical definition is peer-to-peer . This means that there is no central controller in the network,
and all participants talk to each other directly. This property allows for cash transactions to be exchanged directly among the peers
without a third-party involvement, such as by a bank. Distributed ledger Dissecting the technical definition further reveals
that blockchain is a distributed ledger , which simply means that a ledger is spread across the network among all peers in
the network, and each peer holds a copy of the complete ledger. Cryptographically-secure Next, we see that this ledger is
cryptographically-secure , which means that cryptography has been used to provide security services which make this ledger
secure against tampering and misuse. These services include non-repudiation, data integrity, and data origin authentication. You
will see how this is achieved later in Chapter 3 , Symmetric Cryptography which introduces the fascinating world
of cryptography. Append-only Another property that we encounter is that blockchain is append-only , which means that
data can only be added to the blockchain in time-ordered sequential order . This property implies that once data is added
to the blockchain, it is almost impossible to change that data and can be considered practically immutable. Nonetheless, it can be
changed in rare scenarios wherein collusion against the blockchain network succeeds in gaining more than 51 percent of the power.
There may be some legitimate reasons to change data in the blockchain once it has been added, such as the right to be forgotten
or right to erasure (also defined in General Data Protection ( GDPR ) ruling, https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/ ).
However, those are individual cases that need to be handled separately and that require an elegant technical solution. For all practical
purposes, blockchain is indeed immutable and cannot be changed. Updateable via consensus Finally, the most critical attribute
of a blockchain is that it is updateable only via consensus. This is what gives it the power of decentralization. In this
scenario, no central authority is in control of updating the ledger. Instead, any update made to the blockchain is validated against
strict criteria defined by the blockchain protocol and added to the blockchain only after a consensus has been reached among all
participating peers/nodes on the network. To achieve consensus, there are various consensus facilitation algorithms which ensure
that all parties are in agreement about the final state of the data on the blockchain network and resolutely agree upon it to be
true. Consensus algorithms are discussed later in this chapter and throughout the book as appropriate. Blockchain can be thought
of as a layer of a distributed peer-to-peer network running on top of the internet, as can be seen in the following diagram. It is
analogous to SMTP, HTTP, or FTP running on top of TCP/IP. The network view of a blockchain At the bottom layer in the preceding diagram,
there is the internet, which provides a basic communication layer for any network. In this case, a peer-to-peer network runs on top
of the internet, which hosts another layer of blockchain. That layer contains transactions, blocks, consensus mechanisms, state machines,
and blockchain smart contracts. All of these components are shown as a single logical entity in a box, representing blockchain above
the peer-to-peer network. Finally, at the top, there are users or nodes that connect to the blockchain and perform various operations
such as consensus, transaction verification, and processing. These concepts will be discussed in detail later in this book. From
a business standpoint, a blockchain can be defined as a platform where peers can exchange value / electronic cash using transactions
without the need for a centrally-trusted arbitrator. For example, for cash transfers, banks act as a trusted third party. In financial
trading, a central clearing house acts as an arbitrator between two trading parties. This concept is compelling, and once you absorb
it, you will realize the enormous potential of blockchain technology. This disintermediation allows blockchain to be a decentralized
consensus mechanism where no single authority is in charge of the database. Immediately, you'll see a significant benefit of decentralization
here, because if no banks or central clearing houses are required, then it immediately leads to cost savings, faster transaction
speeds, and trust. A block is merely a selection of transactions bundled together and organized logically. A transaction is a record
of an event, for example, the event of transferring cash from a sender's account to a beneficiary's account. A block is made up of
transactions, and its size varies depending on the type and design of the blockchain in use. A reference to a previous block is also
included in the block unless it is a genesis block. A genesis block is the first block in the blockchain that is hardcoded at the
time the blockchain was first started. The structure of a block is also dependent on the type and design of a blockchain. Generally,
however, there are just a few attributes that are essential to the functionality of a block: the block header, which is composed
of pointer to previous block, the timestamp, nonce, Merkle root, and the block body that contains transactions. There are also other
attributes in a block, but generally, the aforementioned components are always available in a block. A nonce is a number that is
generated and used only once. A nonce is used extensively in many cryptographic operations to provide replay protection, authentication,
and encryption. In blockchain, it's used in PoW consensus algorithms and for transaction replay protection. Merkle root is a hash
of all of the nodes of a Merkle tree. Merkle trees are widely used to validate the large data structures securely and efficiently.
In the blockchain world, Merkle trees are commonly used to allow efficient verification of transactions. Merkle root in a blockchain
is present in the block header section of a block, which is the hash of all transactions in a block. This means that verifying only
the Merkle root is required to verify all transactions present in the Merkle tree instead of verifying all transactions one by one.
We will elaborate further on these concepts in Chapter 4 , Public Key Cryptography . The generic structure of a block.
This preceding structure is a simple block diagram that depicts a block. Specific block structures relative to their blockchain technologies
will be discussed later in the book with greater in-depth technical detail. Generic elements of a blockchain Now, let's walk
through the generic elements of a blockchain. You can use this as a handy reference section if you ever need a reminder about the
different parts of a blockchain. More precise elements will be discussed in the context of their respective blockchains in later
chapters, for example, the Ethereum blockchain. The structure of a generic blockchain can be visualized with the help of the following
diagram: Generic structure of a blockchain Elements of a generic blockchain are described here one by one. These are the elements
that you will come across in relation to blockchain:
Address : Addresses are unique identifiers used in a blockchain transaction to denote senders and recipients. An address is
usually a public key or derived from a public key. While addresses can be reused by the same user, addresses themselves are unique.
In practice, however, a single user may not use the same address again and generate a new one for each transaction. This newly-created
address will be unique. Bitcoin is, in fact, a pseudonymous system. End users are usually not directly identifiable, but some
research in removing the anonymity of Bitcoin users has shown that they can be identified successfully. A good practice is for
users to generate a new address for each transaction in order to avoid linking transactions to the common owner, thus preventing
identification.
Transaction : A transaction is the fundamental unit of a blockchain. A transaction represents a transfer of value from one
address to another.
Block : A block is composed of multiple transactions and other elements, such as the previous block hash (hash pointer), timestamp,
and nonce.
Peer-to-peer network : As the name implies, a peer-to-peer network is a network topology wherein all peers can communicate
with each other and send and receive messages.
Scripting or programming language : Scripts or programs perform various operations on a transaction in order to facilitate
various functions. For example, in Bitcoin, transaction scripts are predefined in a language called Script , which consist of
sets of commands that allow nodes to transfer tokens from one address to another. Script is a limited language, however, in the
sense that it only allows essential operations that are necessary for executing transactions, but it does not allow for arbitrary
program development. Think of it as a calculator that only supports standard preprogrammed arithmetic operations. As such, Bitcoin
script language cannot be called Turing complete . In simple words, Turing complete language means that it can perform
any computation. It is named after Alan Turing who developed the idea of Turing machine that can run any algorithm however complex.
Turing complete languages need loops and branching capability to perform complex computations. Therefore, Bitcoin's scripting
language is not Turing complete, whereas Ethereum's Solidity language is.
To facilitate arbitrary program development on a blockchain, Turing complete programming language is needed, and it is now a very
desirable feature of blockchains. Think of this as a computer that allows development of any program using programming languages.
Nevertheless, the security of such languages is a crucial question and an essential and ongoing research area. We will discuss this
in greater detail in Chapter 5 , Introducing Bitcoin , Chapter 9 , Smart Contracts , and Chapter
13 , Development Tools and Frameworks , later in this book.
Virtual machine : This is an extension of the transaction script introduced earlier. A virtual machine allows Turing
complete code to be run on a blockchain (as smart contracts); whereas a transaction script is limited in its operation. However,
virtual machines are not available on all blockchains. Various blockchains use virtual machines to run programs such as Ethereum
Virtual Machine ( EVM ) and Chain Virtual Machine ( CVM ). EVM is used in Ethereum blockchain, while CVM is a virtual machine
developed for and used in an enterprise-grade blockchain called Chain Core .
State machine : A blockchain can be viewed as a state transition mechanism whereby a state is modified from its initial form
to the next one and eventually to a final form by nodes on the blockchain network as a result of a transaction execution, validation,
and finalization process.
Node : A node in a blockchain network performs various functions depending on the role that it takes on. A node can propose
and validate transactions and perform mining to facilitate consensus and secure the blockchain. This goal is achieved by following
a consensus protocol (most commonly PoW). Nodes can also perform other functions such as simple payment verification (lightweight
nodes), validation, and many other functions depending on the type of the blockchain used and the role assigned to the node. Nodes
also perform a transaction signing function. Transactions are first created by nodes and then also digitally signed by nodes using
private keys as proof that they are the legitimate owner of the asset that they wish to transfer to someone else on the blockchain
network. This asset is usually a token or virtual currency, such as Bitcoin, but it can also be any real-world asset represented
on the blockchain by using tokens.
Smart contract : These programs run on top of the blockchain and encapsulate the business logic to be executed when certain
conditions are met. These programs are enforceable and automatically executable. The smart contract feature is not available on
all blockchain platforms, but it is now becoming a very desirable feature due to the flexibility and power that it provides to
the blockchain applications. Smart contracts have many use cases, including but not limited to identity management, capital markets,
trade finance, record management, insurance, and e-governance. Smart contracts will be discussed in more detail in Chapter
9 , Smart Contracts .
How blockchain works We have now defined and described blockchain. Now let's see how a blockchain actually works. Nodes are
either miners who create new blocks and mint cryptocurrency (coins) or block signers who validates and digitally sign
the transactions. A critical decision that every blockchain network has to make is to figure out that which node will append the
next block to the blockchain. This decision is made using a consensus mechanism . The consensus mechanism will be described
later in this chapter. Now we will look at the how a blockchain validates transactions and creates and adds blocks to grow the blockchain.
How blockchain accumulates blocks Now we will look at a general scheme for creating blocks. This scheme is presented here
to give you a general idea of how blocks are generated and what the relationship is between transactions and blocks:
A node starts a transaction by first creating and then digitally signing it with its private key. A transaction can represent
various actions in a blockchain. Most commonly this is a data structure that represents transfer of value between users on the
blockchain network. Transaction data structure usually consists of some logic of transfer of value, relevant rules, source and
destination addresses, and other validation information. This will be covered in more detail in specific chapters on Bitcoin and
Ethereum later in the book.
A transaction is propagated (flooded) by using a flooding protocol, called Gossip protocol, to peers that validate the transaction
based on preset criteria. Usually, more than one node are required to verify the transaction.
Once the transaction is validated, it is included in a block, which is then propagated onto the network. At this point, the
transaction is considered confirmed.
The newly-created block now becomes part of the ledger, and the next block links itself cryptographically back to this block.
This link is a hash pointer. At this stage, the transaction gets its second confirmation and the block gets its first confirmation.
Transactions are then reconfirmed every time a new block is created. Usually, six confirmations in the Bitcoin network are
required to consider the transaction final.
It is worth noting that steps 4 and 5 are considered non-compulsory, as the transaction itself is finalized in step 3; however, block
confirmation and further transaction reconfirmations, if required, are then carried out in step 4 and step 5. This completes the
basic introduction to blockchain. In the next section, you will learn about the benefits and limitations of this technology. Benefits
and limitations of blockchain Numerous advantages of blockchain technology have been discussed in many industries and proposed
by thought leaders around the world who are participating in the blockchain space. The notable benefits of blockchain technology
are as follows:
Decentralization : This is a core concept and benefit of the blockchain. There is no need for a trusted third party or intermediary
to validate transactions; instead, a consensus mechanism is used to agree on the validity of transactions.
Transparency and trust : Because blockchains are shared and everyone can see what is on the blockchain, this allows the system
to be transparent. As a result, trust is established. This is more relevant in scenarios such as the disbursement of funds or
benefits where personal discretion in relation to selecting beneficiaries needs to be restricted.
Immutability : Once the data has been written to the blockchain, it is extremely difficult to change it back. It is not genuinely
immutable, but because changing data is so challenging and nearly impossible, this is seen as a benefit to maintaining an immutable
ledger of transactions.
High availability : As the system is based on thousands of nodes in a peer-to-peer network, and the data is replicated and
updated on every node, the system becomes highly available. Even if some nodes leave the network or become inaccessible, the network
as a whole continues to work, thus making it highly available. This redundancy results in high availability.
Highly secure : All transactions on a blockchain are cryptographically secured and thus provide network integrity.
Simplification of current paradigms : The current blockchain model in many industries, such as finance or health, is somewhat
disorganized. In this model, multiple entities maintain their own databases and data sharing can become very difficult due to
the disparate nature of the systems. However, as a blockchain can serve as a single shared ledger among many interested parties,
this can result in simplifying the model by reducing the complexity of managing the separate systems maintained by each entity.
Faster dealings : In the financial industry, especially in post-trade settlement functions, blockchain can play a vital role
by enabling the quick settlement of trades. Blockchain does not require a lengthy process of verification, reconciliation, and
clearance because a single version of agreed-upon data is already available on a shared ledger between financial organizations.
Cost saving : As no trusted third party or clearing house is required in the blockchain model, this can massively eliminate
overhead costs in the form of the fees which are paid to such parties.
As with any technology, some challenges need to be addressed in order to make a system more robust, useful, and accessible. Blockchain
technology is no exception. In fact, much effort is being made in both academia and industry to overcome the challenges posed by
blockchain technology. The most sensitive blockchain problems are as follows:
Scalability
Adaptability
Regulation
Relatively immature technology
Privacy
All of these issues and possible solutions will be discussed in detail in Chapter 18 , Scalability and Other Challenges
. Tiers of blockchain technology In this section, various layers of blockchain technology are presented. It is thought that
due to the rapid development and progress being made in blockchain technology, many applications will evolve. Some of these advancements
have already been realized, while others are anticipated in the near future based on the current rate of advancement in blockchain
technology. The three levels discussed here were initially described in the book Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy by
Melanie Swan , O'Reilly Media , 2015 as blockchain tiers categorized by applications in each category. This
is how blockchain is evolving, and this versioning shows different tiers of evolution and usage of blockchain technology. In fact,
all blockchain platforms, with limited exceptions, support these functionalities and applications. This versioning is just a logical
segregation of various blockchain categories based on the way that they are currently being used, are evolving, or predicted to evolve.
Also note that this versioning is being presented here for completeness and for historic reasons, as these definitions are somewhat
blurred now, and with the exception of Bitcoin (Blockchain 1.0), all newer blockchain platforms that support smart contract development
can be programmed to provide the functionalities and applications mentioned in all blockchain tiers: 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and beyond. In
addition to Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3, or Tier X in the future, the following represents my own vision of what blockchain technology
eventually could become as this technology advances:
Blockchain 1.0 : This tier was introduced with the invention of Bitcoin, and it is primarily used for cryptocurrencies. Also,
as Bitcoin was the first implementation of cryptocurrencies, it makes sense to categorize this first generation of blockchain
technology to include only cryptographic currencies. All alternative cryptocurrencies as well as Bitcoin fall into this category.
It includes core applications such as payments and applications. This generation started in 2009 when Bitcoin was released and
ended in early 2010.
Blockchain 2.0 : This second blockchain generation is used by financial services and smart contracts. This tier includes various
financial assets, such as derivatives, options, swaps, and bonds. Applications that go beyond currency, finance, and markets are
incorporated at this tier. Ethereum, Hyperledger, and other newer blockchain platforms are considered part of Blockchain 2.0.
This generation started when ideas related to using blockchain for other purposes started to emerge in 2010.
Blockchain 3.0 : This third blockchain generation is used to implement applications beyond the financial services industry
and is used in government, health, media, the arts, and justice. Again, as in Blockchain 2.0, Ethereum, Hyperledger, and newer
blockchains with the ability to code smart contracts are considered part of this blockchain technology tier. This generation of
blockchain emerged around 2012 when multiple applications of blockchain technology in different industries were researched.
Blockchain X.0 : This generation represents a vision of blockchain singularity where one day there will be a public blockchain
service available that anyone can use just like the Google search engine. It will provide services for all realms of society.
It will be a public and open distributed ledger with general-purpose rational agents ( Machina economicus ) running on
a blockchain, making decisions, and interacting with other intelligent autonomous agents on behalf of people, and regulated by
code instead of law or paper contracts. This does not mean that law and contracts will disappear, instead law and contracts will
be implementable in code.
Machina Economicus is a concept which comes from the field of Artificial Intelligence ( AI ) and computational economics. It can
be defined as a machine that makes logical and perfect decisions. There are various technical challenges that need to be addressed
before this dream can be realized.
Discussion of Machina Economicus is beyond the scope of this book, interested readers can refer to https://www.infosys.com/insights/purposeful-ai/Documents/machina-economicus.pdf
, for more information.
This concept in the context of blockchain and its convergence with AI will be elaborated on in Chapter 19 , Current Landscape
and What's Next . Features of a blockchain A blockchain performs various functions which are supported by various features.
These functions include but are not limited to transfer of value, managing assets and agreements. All of the blockchain tiers described
in the previous section perform these functions with the help of features offered by blockchain, but with some exceptions. For example,
smart contracts are not supported by all blockchain platforms, such as Bitcoin. Another example is that not all blockchain platforms
produce cryptocurrency or tokens, such as Hyperledger Fabric, and MultiChain. The features of a blockchain are described here:
Distributed consensus : Distributed consensus is the primary underpinning of a blockchain. This mechanism allows a blockchain
to present a single version of the truth, which is agreed upon by all parties without the requirement of a central authority.
Transaction verification : Any transactions posted from the nodes on the blockchain are verified based on a predetermined
set of rules. Only valid transactions are selected for inclusion in a block.
Platform for smart contracts : A blockchain is a platform on which programs can run to execute business logic on behalf of
the users. Not all blockchains have a mechanism to execute smart contracts ; however, this is a very desirable feature,
and it is available on newer blockchain platforms such as Ethereum and MultiChain.
Smart Contracts
Blockchain technology provides a platform for running smart contracts. These are automated, autonomous programs that reside on
the blockchain network and encapsulate the business logic and code needed to execute a required function when certain conditions
are met. For example, think about an insurance contract where a claim is paid to the traveler if the flight is canceled. In the
real world, this process normally takes a significant amount of time to make the claim, verify it, and pay the insurance amount
to the claimant (traveler). What if this whole process were automated with cryptographically-enforced trust, transparency, and
execution so that as soon as the smart contract received a feed that the flight in question has been canceled, it automatically
triggers the insurance payment to the claimant? If the flight is on time, the smart contract pays itself.
This is indeed a revolutionary feature of blockchain, as it provides flexibility, speed, security, and automation for real-world
scenarios that can lead to a completely trustworthy system with significant cost reductions. Smart contracts can be programmed
to perform any actions that blockchain users need and according to their specific business requirements.
Transferring value between peers : Blockchain enables the transfer of value between its users via tokens. Tokens can be thought
of as a carrier of value.
Generation of cryptocurrency : This feature is optional depending on the type of blockchain in use. A blockchain can create
cryptocurrency as an incentive to its miners who validate the transactions and spend resources to secure the blockchain. We will
discuss cryptocurrencies in great detail in Chapter 5 , Introducing Bitcoin .
Smart property : It is now possible to link a digital or physical asset to the blockchain in such a secure and precise manner
that it cannot be claimed by anyone else. You are in full control of your asset, and it cannot be double-spent or double-owned.
Compare this with a digital music file, for example, which can be copied many times without any controls. While it is true that
many Digital Rights Management ( DRM ) schemes are being used currently along with copyright laws, but none of them is enforceable
in such a way as blockchain based DRM can be. Blockchain can provide DRM functionality in such a way that it can be enforced fully.
There are famously broken DRM schemes which looked great in theory but were hacked due to one limitation or another. One example
is Oculus hack ( http://www.wired.co.uk/article/oculus-rift-drm-hacked ).
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William Slater III , June 13, 2018
If you want to learn Blockchain or if you think you really understand Blockchain, check out this excellent book.
If you want to learn Blockchain or if you think you really understand Blockchain, check out this excellent book.
I bought Imran Bashir's Mastering Blockchain, 2nd Edition because I knew it was a complete update to his first edition, and
because I wanted to keep up with what's happening in the rapidly moving world of Blockchain Development. Needless to say, I am
a huge fan of Blockchain and the promise it has for trusted, decentralized distributed computing transactions.
I have been pleasantly surprised and extremely satisfied with this invaluable tome. It could have been titled "The Bible of
Blockchain", because that's basically what it is. No serious Blockchain Developer or Blockchain Project Manager should be without
this book. With its wealth of information on every facet of Blockchain, it is easily worth more than 10 times the purchase price.
That is not an exaggeration and here's why:
1. The author, who is clearly a great author and a very experienced practitioner of all areas Blockchain development.
2. It is authoritative.
3. Easy to read.
4. Extremely thorough.
5. Provides useful Blockchain knowledge that is immediately useful to all Blockchain professionals from the novice to the journeyman
and master.
What really stands out:
The author's explanation of Blockchain, what it is, its components, and how it works is some of the clearest and most thorough
I have seen.
His incredible explanations of the details about Ethereum and the Ethereum Development environment works. And his explanations
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The author is such a great teacher that he suggests tricks like installing Wireshark so that the Blockchain engineer can actually
see the network events between clients and servers happening in real-time.
The author generously defines and suggests a full spectrum of Blockchain tools from Wallet Managers to Blockchain Browsers
to development environments and that is much appreciated.
His though coverage of major cryptocurrencies shows that he his fair, knowledgeable, passionate about providing as much information
as possible to the reader.
In Summary:
I love this book and have recommended it to everyone I know who is interested in Blockchain. I also teach Blockchain at the
graduate school level and have used this book in my course development and teaching, for my students and the interns I am working
with this summer of 2018. Quite simply, there is nothing better on the market.
Special thanks to the author, Imran Bashir, for his tireless work that produced this masterpiece, and to everyone at PACKT
for publishing it. It is the best Blockchain Book of 2018.
Amazon Customer , July 3, 2018
This was the best book I found out there for Blockchain
As a non-developer, I was able to understand 80% of this book. The information was thorough and concise. This was the best
book I found out there for Blockchain. Read more 10 people found this helpful
Torben Worm , December 1, 2018
Practical hands-on book
This book touches a lot of subjects from distribution over cryptography to blockchain and smart contracts with many practical
examples and pointers to further resources. If you are interested in getting started with blockchain and related technologies
it's a good starting point, but if you are interested in the more theoretical aspects and deeper insights you will probably find
that the book does not fulfil your needs.
Ele Liao , July 4, 2019
a good first book for blockchain
an easy read for a very comprehensive context in the blockchain. Read more
Helpful
ST , October 22, 2019
comprehensive text on blockchain
I have read a number of popular books on blockchain. This is the first book that serves as a text on blockchain. Excellent,
clear presentation. Read more
Helpful
Muriel , June 23, 2018
Thorough and accessible
I am a developer currently building a Solidity DApp. I acquired an advanced reader's copy of this book. "Mastering Blockchain"
by Imran Bashir does a thorough job explaining the foundational concepts behind blockchain programming. I like how the book contains
both high-level descriptions and diagrams as well as examples of implementation at the code level. I was pleasantly surprised
by how accessible the writing is. This book helped me understand the differences between various types of blockchain technologies.
For example, my Bitcoin developer friends asked me how the Ethereum Patricia Merkle Tries I use are different from the regular
Merkle Trees they use in their work. This book gave very clear and concise explanations of that particular difference between
Bitcoin and Ethereum data structures.
Victor , July 30, 2018
It covers the essential and a bit more.
There are several books regarding the topic and it's quite complicate to find a good one among all the noise. I would say that
this is a good one. It's quite concise to go direct to the topic but at the same time it provides a complete view. Quite interesting,
and this is something that almost all other publications miss is the cryptography side. There are several chapters focused on
the topic and these provides a complete background that let you to understand better the blockchain mechanism. Is a really good
book for people with some technical background that want to understand blockchain.
Rami Kudmani , June 20, 2018
Comprehensive and Enjoyable
I have read the first edition of this book. The book is well-structured and it covers a broad spectrum of knowledge around
blockchain technology. What is interesting about this book is that it is one of the rare blockchain books that you could read
the majority of it by non-tech people. The other thing is that it covers many important aspects about Blockchain starting from
digital currencies, alt-coins down to non-financial applications.
I liked that book and would recommend it for newbies who are looking to understand blockchain and crypto-currencies, for for
someone who understands bits and pieces here and there and wants to fill knowledge gaps about this interesting topic.
"... Finally, the Thought Police were also inspired by the human struggle for self-honesty and the pressure to conform. "The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe," Rudyard Kipling once observed. ..."
"... The struggle to remain true to one's self was also felt by Orwell, who wrote about "the smelly little orthodoxies" that contend for the human soul. Orwell prided himself with a "power of facing unpleasant facts" -- something of a rarity in humans -- even though it often hurt him in British society. ..."
"... In a sense, 1984 is largely a book about the human capacity to maintain a grip on the truth in the face of propaganda and power. ..."
"... The new Thought Police may be less sinister than the ThinkPol in 1984 , but the next generation will have to decide if seeking conformity of thought or language through public shaming is healthy or suffocating. FEE's Dan Sanchez recently observed that many people today feel like they're "walking on eggshells" and live in fear of making a verbal mistake that could draw condemnation. ..."
"... When the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, it was revealed that the Stasi , East Germany's secret police, had a full-time staff of 91,000. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but what's frightening is that the organization had almost double that in informants, including children. And it wasn't just children reporting on parents; sometimes it was the other way around." ..."
"... Movies like the Matrix actually helped people to question everything. What is real and not. Who is the enemy, and can we be sure. And when Conspiracy theories become fact, people learn. The problem is in later generations who get indoctrinated at school and college to not think, not question. Rational examination is forbidden. ..."
There are a lot of unpleasant things in George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984 . Spying screens. Torture and propaganda. Victory
Gin and Victory Coffee always sounded particularly dreadful. And there is Winston Smith's varicose ulcer,
apparently a symbol of his humanity (or something),
which always seems to be "throbbing." Gross.
None of this sounds very enjoyable, but it's not the worst thing in 1984 . To me, the most terrifying part was that you couldn't
keep Big Brother out of your head.
Unlike other 20th-century totalitarians, the authoritarians in 1984 aren't that interested in controlling behavior or speech.
They do, of course, but it's only as a means to an end. Their real goal is to control the gray matter between the ears.
"When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will," O'Brien (the bad guy) tells the protagonist Winston Smith
near the end of the book.
We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture
his inner mind, we reshape him.
Big Brother's tool for doing this is the Thought Police, aka the ThinkPol, who are assigned to root out and punish unapproved
thoughts. We see how this works when Winston's neighbor Parsons, an obnoxious Party sycophant, is reported to the Thought Police
by his own child, who heard him commit a thought crime while talking in his sleep.
"It was my little daughter," Parsons tells Winston when asked who it was who denounced him.
"She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a
nipper of seven, eh?"
Who Are These Thought Police?
We don't know a lot about the Thought Police, and some of what we think we know may actually not be true since some of what Winston
learns comes from the Inner Party, and they lie.
What we know is this: The Thought Police are secret police of
Oceania -- the fictional land
of 1984 that probably consists of the UK, the Americas, and parts of Africa -- who use surveillance and informants to monitor the
thoughts of citizens. The Thought Police also use psychological warfare and false-flag operations to entrap free thinkers or nonconformists.
Those who stray from Party orthodoxy are punished but not killed. The Thought Police don't want to kill nonconformists so much
as break them. This happens in Room 101 of the Ministry of Love, where prisoners are re-educated through degradation and torture.
(Funny sidebar: the name Room 101
apparently was inspired by a conference room at the BBC in which Orwell was forced to endure tediously long meetings.)
The Origins of the Thought Police
Orwell didn't create the Thought Police out of thin air. They were inspired to at least some degree by
his experiences in
the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), a complicated and
confusing affair. What you really need to know is that there were no good guys, and it ended with left-leaning anarchists and Republicans
in Spain crushed by their Communist overlords, which helped the fascists win.
Orwell, an idealistic 33-year-old socialist when the conflict started, supported the anarchists and loyalists fighting for the
left-leaning Second Spanish Republic, which received most of its support from the Soviet Union and Josef Stalin. (That might sound
bad, but keep in mind that the Nazis were on the other side.) Orwell described the atmosphere in Barcelona in December 1936 when
everything seemed to be going well for his side.
The anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing ... It was the first time
that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle,
he wrote in Homage to Catalonia.
[E]very wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle ... every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized.
That all changed pretty fast. Stalin, a rather paranoid fellow, was bent on making Republican Spain loyal to him . Factions and
leaders perceived as loyal to his exiled Communist rival, Leon
Trotsky , were liquidated. Loyal Communists found themselves denounced as fascists. Nonconformists and "uncontrollables" were
disappeared.
Orwell never forgot the
purges or the steady stream of lies and propaganda churned out from Communist papers during the conflict. (To be fair, their Nationalist
opponents also used propaganda
and lies .) Stalin's NKVD was not exactly like the Thought Police
-- the NKVD showed less patience with its victims --
but they certainly helped inspire Orwell's secret police.
The Thought Police were not all propaganda and torture, though. They also stem from Orwell's ideas on truth. During his time in
Spain, he saw how power could corrupt truth, and he shared these reflections in his work
George Orwell: My Country Right or Left, 1940-1943 .
...I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary
lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed.
I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the
heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional
superstructures over events that had never happened.
In short, Orwell's brush with totalitarianism left him
worried that "the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world."
This scared him. A lot. He actually wrote, "This kind of thing is frightening to me."
Finally, the Thought Police were also inspired by the human struggle for self-honesty and the pressure to conform. "The individual
has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe," Rudyard Kipling once observed.
The struggle to remain true to one's self was also felt by Orwell, who
wrote about "the smelly little orthodoxies" that contend for the human soul. Orwell prided himself with a "power of facing unpleasant
facts" -- something of a rarity in humans -- even though it often hurt him in British society.
In a sense, 1984 is largely a book about the human capacity to maintain a grip on the truth in the face of propaganda and power.
It might be tempting to dismiss Orwell's book as a figment of dystopian literature. Unfortunately, that's not as easy as it sounds.
Modern history shows he was onto something.
When the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, it was revealed that the Stasi, East Germany's secret police, had a full-time
staff of 91,000.
When the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, it was revealed that
the Stasi , East Germany's secret police, had a full-time staff
of 91,000. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but what's frightening is that the organization had almost double that in informants,
including children. And it wasn't just children reporting on parents;
sometimes
it was the other way around.
Nor did the use of state spies to prosecute thoughtcrimes end with the fall of the Soviet Union. Believe it or not, it's still
happening today. The New York Times recently ran
a report featuring one Peng
Wei, a 21-year-old Chinese chemistry major. He is one of the thousands of "student information officers" China uses to root out professors
who show signs of disloyalty to President Xi Jinping or the Communist Party.
The New Thought Police?
The First Amendment of the US Constitution, fortunately, largely protects Americans from the creepy authoritarian systems found
in 1984 , East Germany, and China; but the rise of "cancel culture" shows the pressure to conform to all sorts of orthodoxies (smelly
or not) remains strong.
The new Thought Police may be less sinister than the ThinkPol in 1984 , but the next generation will have to decide if seeking
conformity of thought or language through public shaming is healthy or suffocating. FEE's Dan Sanchez
recently observed
that many people today feel like they're "walking on eggshells" and live in fear of making a verbal mistake that could draw condemnation.
That's a lot of pressure, especially for people still learning the acceptable boundaries of a new moral code that is constantly
evolving. Most people, if the pressure is sufficient, will eventually say "2+2=5" just to escape punishment. That's exactly what
Winston Smith does at the end of 1984 , after all. Yet Orwell also leaves readers with a glimmer of hope.
"Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad," Orwell wrote.
"There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad."
In other words, the world may be mad, but that doesn't mean you have to be.
" When the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, it was revealed that the Stasi, East Germany's secret police, had a full-time
staff of 91,000.
When the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, it was revealed that
the Stasi , East Germany's secret police, had a full-time staff
of 91,000. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but what's frightening is that the organization had almost double that in
informants,
including children. And it wasn't just children reporting on parents;
sometimes
it was the other way around."
Confidential informants should be illegal.
How many people are employed by the various Federal intelligence agencies, of which there are 17 the last time I heard. Hundreds
of thousands of Federal employees, protected by strong government employee unions.
When this shitshow goes live, it will only take a small team to shut off the water that is necessary to keep the NSA servers
cool in Utah.
Movies like the Matrix actually helped people to question everything. What is real and not. Who is the enemy, and can we be sure. And when Conspiracy theories become fact, people learn. The problem is in later generations who get indoctrinated at school and college to not think, not question.
Rational examination
is forbidden.
"... This is the direction in which the world is going at the present time, and the trend lies deep in the political, social and economic foundations of the contemporary world situation. ..."
"... Specifically the danger lies in the structure imposed on Socialist and on Liberal capitalist communities by the necessity to prepare for total war with the U.S.S.R. and the new weapons, of which of course the atomic bomb is the most powerful and the most publicized. But danger lies also in the acceptance of a totalitarian outlook by intellectuals of all colours. ..."
"... Two of the principal super states will obviously be the Anglo-American world and Eurasia. If these two great blocks line up as mortal enemies it is obvious that the Anglo-Americans will not take the name of their opponents and will not dramatize themselves on the scene of history as Communists. Thus they will have to find a new name for themselves. The name suggested in Nineteen Eighty-Four is of course Ingsoc, but in practice a wide range of choices is open. In the U.S.A. the phrase "Americanism" or "hundred per cent Americanism" is suitable and the qualifying adjective is as totalitarian as anyone could wish. ..."
"... Pretty much explains the SDP and NuLabourInc and his name sake Blair and our political landscape of the last 50 years, don't you think? ..."
"... Also pay attention to the 'parody phrase. ' ..."
Because i feel that some agenda is at play. I'm not going to accuse you of trolling, or even a bit of gas lighting, but
it seems like a slide into classic red scaring and recasting of Eric Blair
By way of explaining my emotion and since you mention Warburg, here is an example of Orwellian post humous attribution.
He never said "imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever."
'from a post-publication press release directed by publisher Fredric Warburg toward readers who "had misinterpreted [Orwell's]
aim, taking the novel as a criticism of the current British Labour Party, or of contemporary socialism in general." The quotation
from the press release was "soon given the status of a last statement or deathbed appeal, given that Orwell was hospitalized
at the time and dead six months later."
You can read more at georgeorwellnovels.com, which provides a great deal of context on this press release, which runs, in
full, as follows:
It has been suggested by some of the reviewers of Nineteen Eighty-Four that it is the author's view that this, or something
like this, is what will happen inside the next forty years in the Western world. This is not correct. I think that, allowing
for the book being after all a parody, something like Nineteen Eighty-Four could happen. This is the direction in which
the world is going at the present time, and the trend lies deep in the political, social and economic foundations of the contemporary
world situation.
Specifically the danger lies in the structure imposed on Socialist and on Liberal capitalist communities by the necessity
to prepare for total war with the U.S.S.R. and the new weapons, of which of course the atomic bomb is the most powerful and
the most publicized. But danger lies also in the acceptance of a totalitarian outlook by intellectuals of all colours.
The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: Don't let it happen. It depends on you.
George Orwell assumes that if such societies as he describes in Nineteen Eighty-Four come into being there will be several
super states. This is fully dealt with in the relevant chapters of Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is also discussed from a different
angle by James Burnham in The Managerial Revolution. These super states will naturally be in opposition to each other or (a
novel point) will pretend to be much more in opposition than in fact they are.
Two of the principal super states will obviously be the Anglo-American world and Eurasia. If these two great blocks
line up as mortal enemies it is obvious that the Anglo-Americans will not take the name of their opponents and will not dramatize
themselves on the scene of history as Communists. Thus they will have to find a new name for themselves. The name suggested
in Nineteen Eighty-Four is of course Ingsoc, but in practice a wide range of choices is open. In the U.S.A. the phrase "Americanism"
or "hundred per cent Americanism" is suitable and the qualifying adjective is as totalitarian as anyone could wish.
If there is a failure of nerve and the Labour party breaks down in its attempt to deal with the hard problems with which
it will be faced, tougher types than the present Labour leaders will inevitably take over, drawn probably from the ranks of
the Left, but not sharing the Liberal aspirations of those now in power. Members of the present British government, from Mr.
Attlee and Sir Stafford Cripps down to Aneurin Bevan will never willingly sell the pass to the enemy, and in general the older
men, nurtured in a Liberal tradition, are safe, but the younger generation is suspect and the seeds of totalitarian thought
are probably widespread among them. It is invidious to mention names, but everyone could without difficulty think for himself
of prominent English and American personalities whom the cap would fit.' http://www.openculture.com/2014/11/george-orwells-final-warning.html
-- -- -- -
Pretty much explains the SDP and NuLabourInc and his name sake Blair and our political landscape of the last 50 years, don't
you think?
Also pay attention to the 'parody phrase. '
'
As i wrote earlier, perhaps Blair of Eton ultimately saw how clearly hist talents had been misused by the 'totalitarians' before
he died.
I understand that some of his works are still censored and others never published. As are his state employment in propaganda
on which he probably based his 'parody' on.
" Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents Mass
movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a
devil. " ~ Eric Hoffer,
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
(This article was reprinted in the online magazine of the Institute for Ethics &
Emerging Technologies, October 19, 2017.)
Eric Hoffer (1898
– 1983) was an American moral and social philosopher who worked for more than twenty
years as longshoremen in San Francisco. The author of ten books, he was awarded the Presidential Medal
of Freedom in 1983. His first book,
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951), is a work in social psychology which discusses the
psychological causes of fanaticism. It is widely considered a classic.
Overview
The first lines of Hoffer's book clearly state its purpose:
This book deals with some peculiarities common to all mass movements, be they religious
movements, social revolutions or nationalist movements. It does not maintain that all movements
are identical, but that they share certain essential characteristics which give them a family
likeness.
All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for
united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they
project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are
capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them
demand blind faith and single-hearted allegiance
The assumption that mass movements have many traits in common does not imply that all
movements are equally beneficent or poisonous. The book passes no judgments, and expresses no
preferences. It merely tries to explain (pp. xi-xiii)
Part 1 – The Appeal of Mass
Movements
Hoffer says that mass movements begin when discontented, frustrated, powerless people lose
faith in existing institutions and demand change. Feeling hopeless, such people participate in
movements that allow them to become part of a larger collective. They become true believers in
a mass movement that "appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self,
but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self because it can satisfy the passion for
self-renunciation." (p. 12)
Put another way, Hoffer says: "Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a
substitute for the loss of faith in ourselves." (p. 14) Leaders inspire these movements, but
the seeds of mass movements must already exist for the leaders to be successful. And while mass
movements typically blend nationalist, political and religious ideas, they all compete for
angry and/or marginalized people.
Part 2 – The Potential Converts
The destitute are not usually converts to mass movements; they are too busy trying to
survive to become engaged. But what Hoffer calls the "new poor," those who previously had
wealth or status but who believe they have now lost it, are potential converts. Such people are
resentful and blame others for their problems.
Mass movements also attract the partially assimilated -- those who feel alienated from
mainstream culture. Others include misfits, outcasts, adolescents, and sinners, as well as the
ambitious, selfish, impotent and bored. What all converts all share is the feeling that their
lives are meaningless and worthless.
A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but
by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness, and meaninglessness of an individual
existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring on them an absolute truth or
remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them
from their ineffectual selves -- and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a
closely knit and exultant corporate whole. (p. 41)
Hoffer emphasizes that creative people -- those who experience creative flow -- aren't
usually attracted to mass movements. Creativity provides inner joy which both acts as an
antidote to the frustrations with external hardships. Creativity also relieves boredom, a major
cause of mass movements:
There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society's ripeness for a mass movement than
the prevalence of unrelieved boredom. In almost all the descriptions of the periods preceding
the rise of mass movements there is reference to vast ennui; and in their earliest stages mass
movements are more likely to find sympathizers and
support among the bored than among the exploited and oppressed. To a deliberate fomenter of
mass upheavals, the report that people are bored still should be at least as encouraging as
that they are suffering from intolerable economic or political abuses. (pp. 51-52)
Part 3
– United Action and Self-Sacrifice
Mass movements demand of their followers a "total surrender of a distinct self." (p. 117)
Thus a follower identifies as "a member of a certain tribe or family." (p. 62) Furthermore,
mass movements denigrate and "loathe the present." (p. 74) By regarding the modern world as
worthless, the movement inspires a battle against it.
What surprises one, when listening to the frustrated as the decry the present and all its
works, is the enormous joy they derive from doing so. Such delight cannot come from the mere
venting of a grievance. There must be something more -- and there is. By expiating upon the
incurable baseness and vileness of the times, the frustrated soften their feeling of failure
and isolation (p. 75)
Mass movements also promote faith over reason and serve as "fact-proof screens between the
faithful and the realities of the world." (p. 79)
The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude
presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth. If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it
has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable. One has to
get to heaven or the distant future to determine the truth of an effective doctrine simple
words are made pregnant with meaning and made to look like symbols in a secret message. There
is thus an illiterate air about the most literate true believer. (pp. 80-81).
So believers ignore truths that contradict their fervent beliefs, but this hides the fact
that,
The fanatic is perpetually incomplete and insecure. He cannot generate self-assurance out of
his individual sources but finds it only by clinging passionately to whatever support he
happens to embrace. The passionate attachment is the essence of his blind devotion and
religiosity, and he sees in it the sources of all virtue and strength He sacrifices his life to
prove his worth The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to reason or his
moral sense. He fears compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and
righteousness of his holy cause. (p. 85).
Thus the doctrines of the mass movement must not be questioned -- they are regarded with
certitude -- and they are spread through "persuasion, coercion, and proselytization."
Persuasion works best on those already sympathetic to the doctrines, but it must be vague
enough to allow "the frustrated to hear the echo of their own musings in impassioned double
talk." (p. 106) Hoffer quotes Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels : "a sharp sword must
always stand behind propaganda if it is to be really effective." (p. 106) The urge to
proselytize comes not from a deeply held belief in the truth of doctrine but from an urge of
the fanatic to "strengthen his own faith by converting others." (p. 110)
Moreover, mass movements need an object of hate which unifies believers, and "the ideal
devil is a foreigner." (p. 93) Mass movements need a devil. But in reality, the "hatred of a
true believer is actually a disguised self-loathing " and "the fanatic is perpetually
incomplete and insecure." (p. 85) Through their fanatical action and personal sacrifice, the
fanatic tries to give their life meaning.
Part 4 – Beginning and End
Hoffer states that three personality types typically lead mass movements: "men of words",
"fanatics", and "practical men of action." Men of words try to "discredit the prevailing
creeds" and creates a "hunger for faith" which is then fed by "doctrines and slogans of the new
faith." (p. 140) (In the USA think of the late William F. Buckley.) Slowly followers
emerge.
Then fanatics take over. (In the USA think of the Koch brothers, Murdoch, Limbaugh,
O'Reilly, Hannity, Alex Jones, etc.) Fanatics don't find solace in literature, philosophy or
art. Instead, they are characterized by viciousness, the urge to destroy, and the perpetual
struggle for power. But after mass movements transform the social order, the insecurity of
their followers is not ameliorated. At this point, the "practical men of action" take over and
try to lead the new order by further controlling their followers. (Think Steve Bannon, Mitch
McConnell, Steve Miller, etc.)
In the end mass movements that succeed often bring about a social order worse than the
previous one. (This was one of Will Durant's findings in The Lessons of History .) As Hoffer puts it near the end of his work: "All mass
movements irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed
fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred, and intolerance." (p. 141)
Quotes from
Hoffer, Eric (2002). The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements .
Harper Perennial Modern Classics. ISBN 978-0-060-50591-2 .
The Iron Heel is a dystopian[1] novel by American writer Jack London, first published in
1908.[2] Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern dystopian" fiction,[3] it
chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States.
In The Iron Heel, Jack London's socialist views are explicitly on display. A forerunner of
soft science fiction novels and stories of the 1960s and '70s, the book stresses future changes
in society and politics while paying much less attention to technological changes.
The novel is based on the fictional "Everhard Manuscript" written by Avis Everhard... The
Manuscript itself covers the years 1912 through 1932 in which the Oligarchy (or "Iron Heel") arose in the United
States. In Asia, Japan conquered East Asia and created its own empire, India gained independence,
and Europe became socialist. Canada, Mexico, and Cuba formed their own Oligarchies and were
aligned with the U.S. (London remains silent as to the fates of South America, Africa, and the
Middle East.)
In North America, the Oligarchy maintains power for three centuries until the Revolution
succeeds and ushers in the Brotherhood of Man. During the years of the novel, the First Revolt is
described and preparations for the Second Revolt are discussed. From the perspective of Everhard,
the imminent Second Revolt is sure to succeed but from Meredith's frame story , the reader knows that Ernest
Everhard's hopes would go unfulfilled until centuries after his death.
The Oligarchy is the largest monopoly of trusts (or robber barons ) who manage to
squeeze out the middle class by bankrupting most small to mid-sized business as
well as reducing all farmers to effective serfdom . This Oligarchy maintains power through a
"labor caste " and the
Mercenaries . Laborers in
essential industries like steel and rail are elevated and given decent wages, housing, and
education. Indeed, the tragic turn in the novel (and Jack London's core warning to his
contemporaries) is the treachery of these favored unions which break with the other unions and
side with the Oligarchy. Further, a second, military caste is formed: the Mercenaries. The Mercenaries are
officially the army of the US but are in fact in the employ of the Oligarchs.
Jack London ambitiously predicted a breakdown of the US republic starting a few years past
1908, but various events have caused his predicted future to diverge from actual history. Most
crucially, though London placed quite accurately the time when international tensions will reach
their peak (1913 in "The Iron Heel", 1914 in actual history ), he (like many others at
the time) predicted that when this moment came, labor solidarity would prevent a war that would
include the US, Germany and other nations.
The Iron Heel is cited by George Orwell 's biographer Michael Shelden as having influenced
Orwell's most famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four .
[4] Orwell himself
described London as having made "a very remarkable prophecy of the rise of Fascism ", in the book and believed that
London's understanding of the primitive had made him a better prophet "than many better-informed
and more logical thinkers." [5] ( The Iron Heel - Wikipedia )
As writer or thinker, Jack London can't touch George Orwell, but he's nearly the Brit's
equal when it comes to describing society's bottom. To both, being a writer is as much a
physical as an intellectual endeavor. Wading into everything, they braved all discomforts and
dangers. This attitude has become very rare, and not just among writers. Trapped in intensely
mediated lives, we all think we know more as we experience less and less.
At age 14, London worked in a salmon cannery. At 16, he was an oyster pirate. At 17, he was
a sailor on a sealing schooner that reached Japan. At 18, London crossed the country as a hobo
and, near Buffalo, was jailed for 30 days for vagrancy. At 21, he prospected for gold in the
Klondike. London was also a newsboy, longshoreman, roustabout, window washer, jute mill grunt,
carpet cleaner and electrician, so he had many incidents, mishaps and ordeals to draw from, and
countless characters to portray.
London's The Road chronicles his hobo and prison misadventure. Condemned to hard labor, the
teenager nearly starved, "While we got plenty of water, we did not get enough of the bread. A
ration of bread was about the size of one's two fists, and three rations a day were given to
each prisoner. There was one good thing, I must say, about the water -- it was hot. In the
morning it was called 'coffee,' at noon it was dignified as 'soup,' and at night it masqueraded
as 'tea.' But it was the same old water all the time."
London quickly worked his way up the clink's hierarchy, to become one of 13 enforcers for
the guards. This experience alone should have taught him that in all situations, not just dire
ones, each man will prioritize his own interest and survival, and that there's no solidarity
among the "downtrodden" or whatever. Orwell's Animal Farm is a parable about this. Since man is
an egoist, power lust lurks everywhere.
During the Russo-Japanese War a decade later, London would approvingly quote a letter from
Japanese socialists to their Russian comrades, but this pacific gesture was nothing compared to
the nationalistic fervor engulfing both countries. Like racism, nationalism is but self love.
Though clearly madness if overblown, it's unextinguishable.
Jailed, London the future socialist stood by as his gang disciplined a naïf, "I
remember a handsome young mulatto of about twenty who got the insane idea into his head that he
should stand for his rights. And he did have the right of it, too; but that didn't help him
any. He lived on the topmost gallery. Eight hall-men took the conceit out of him in just about
a minute and a half -- for that was the length of time required to travel along his gallery to
the end and down five flights of steel stairs. He travelled the whole distance on every portion
of his anatomy except his feet, and the eight hall-men were not idle. The mulatto struck the
pavement where I was standing watching it all. He regained his feet and stood upright for a
moment. In that moment he threw his arms wide apart and omitted an awful scream of terror and
pain and heartbreak. At the same instant, as in a transformation scene, the shreds of his stout
prison clothes fell from him, leaving him wholly naked and streaming blood from every portion
of the surface of his body. Then he collapsed in a heap, unconscious. He had learned his
lesson, and every convict within those walls who heard him scream had learned a lesson. So had
I learned mine. It is not a nice thing to see a man's heart broken in a minute and a half."
Jailed, you immediately recover your racial consciousness, but London apparently missed
this. In any case, a lesser writer or man wouldn't confess to such complicity with power.
Elsewhere, London admits to much hustling and lying, and even claims these practices made him a
writer, "I have often thought that to this training of my tramp days is due much of my success
as a story-writer. In order to get the food whereby I lived, I was compelled to tell tales that
rang true [ ] Also, I quite believe it was my tramp-apprenticeship that made a realist out of
me. Realism constitutes the only goods one can exchange at the kitchen door for grub."
Informed by hard-earned, bitter experience, London's accounts resonate and convince, even
when outlandish, for they are essentially true about the human condition.
London on a fellow prisoner, "He was a huge, illiterate brute, an
ex-Chesapeake-Bay-oyster-pirate, an 'ex-con' who had done five years in Sing Sing, and a
general all-around stupidly carnivorous beast. He used to trap sparrows that flew into our hall
through the open bars. When he made a capture, he hurried away with it into his cell, where I
have seen him crunching bones and spitting out feathers as he bolted it raw."
Though London often uses "beast" or "beastly" to describe how humans are treated, this
fellow appears to be congenitally bestial, with his all-around stupidity. As for the other
prisoners, "Our hall was a common stews, filled with the ruck and the filth, the scum and
dregs, of society -- hereditary inefficients, degenerates, wrecks, lunatics, addled
intelligences, epileptics, monsters, weaklings, in short, a very nightmare of humanity." Though
many are wrecked, others are born deficient, addled or weak, but in our retarded days, morons
must be smart in other ways, and raging monsters are merely oppressed into mayhem or
murder.
ORDER IT NOW
But of course, society does oppress, then and now. Remember that an 18-year-old London was
sentenced to 30 days of hard labor for merely being in a strange city without a hotel
reservation. Another inmate was doing 60 for eating from a trash can, "He had strayed out to
the circus ground, and, being hungry, had made his way to the barrel that contained the refuse
from the table of the circus people. 'And it was good bread,' he often assured me; 'and the
meat was out of sight.' A policeman had seen him and arrested him, and there he was." Well, at
least Americans are no longer locked up for dumpster diving, so there's progress for you, but
then many must still feed from the garbage, with that number rapidly rising.
Though London was a worldwide celebrity at his death in 1916, his fame faded so fast that
Orwell could comment in 1944, "Jack London is one of those border-line writers whose works
might be forgotten altogether unless somebody takes the trouble to revive them."
London's most enduring book may turn out to be The People of the Abyss, his 1903
investigation into the abjectly impoverished of London's East End.
Dressed accordingly, London joined its homeless to see how they survived. With a 58-year-old
carter and a 65-year-old carpenter, London wandered the cold streets, "From the slimy,
spittle-drenched, sidewalk, they were picking up bits of orange peel, apple skin, and grape
stems, and, they were eating them. The pits of greengage plums they cracked between their teeth
for the kernels inside. They picked up stray bits of bread the size of peas, apple cores so
black and dirty one would not take them to be apple cores, and these things these two men took
into their mouths, and chewed them, and swallowed them; and this, between six and seven o'clock
in the evening of August 20, year of our Lord 1902, in the heart of the greatest, wealthiest,
and most powerful empire the world has ever seen."
Having mingled with many homeless in cities across America, I can attest that the food
situation is not as bad in that unraveling empire, but the squalor is just as appalling, if not
worse. A Wall Street Journal headline, "California's Biggest Cities Confront a 'Defecation
Crisis'." There's no need to import public shitting from shitholes, since there's already
plenty of it, homegrown and well-fertilized with smirkingly cynical policies.
Trump, "We can't let Los Angeles, San Francisco and numerous other cities destroy themselves
by allowing what's happening," but he's only talking about the unsightliness of it all, not its
root cause, which is a deliberately wrecked economy that, over decades, has fabulously enriched
his and our masters. This, too, is a controlled demolition.
Ensconced in some leafy suburb, you might be missing this beastly, raving, zonked out and
shitty transformation. Jack London, though, never recoiled from society's diarrhea. My favorite
passage of The People of the Abyss is his account of bathing, so to speak, in a workhouse:
We stripped our clothes, wrapping them up in our coats and buckling our belts about them,
and deposited them in a heaped rack and on the floor -- a beautiful scheme for the spread of
vermin. Then, two by two, we entered the bathroom. There were two ordinary tubs, and this I
know: the two men preceding had washed in that water, we washed in the same water, and it was
not changed for the two men that followed us. This I know; but I am also certain that the
twenty-two of us washed in the same water.
I did no more than make a show of splashing some of this dubious liquid at myself, while I
hastily brushed it off with a towel wet from the bodies of other men. My equanimity was not
restored by seeing the back of one poor wretch a mass of blood from attacks of vermin and
retaliatory scratching.
If other men had to endure that, why shouldn't London, especially since he was trying to
understand these wretches?
Many moons, suns and saturns ago, I taught a writing course at UPenn, and for one
assignment, I asked students to take the subway to a strange stop, get off, walk around and
observe, but don't do it in the dark, I did warn them. Frightened, one girl couldn't get off,
so simply wrote about her very first ride. At least she got a taste of an entirely alien world
beyond campus. Considering that her parents had to cough up over 60 grands annually to consign
her to the Ivy League, they'd probably want to murder me for subjecting their precious to such
needless anxieties.
Cocooned, Americans are oblivious to their own destruction. Screwed, they're fixated by
Pornhub.
London insisted a worldwide class revolution was the answer. A century and several gory
nightmares later, there are those who still cling to this faith, but only in the West. In the
East, even the most ignorant know the survival of his identity and dignity is conterminous with
his nation's. Orwell understood this well. It is the biggest crime to wreck anyone's heritage
in a flash.
In each society, you can begin to right the ship by prosecuting the biggest criminals, with
existing laws, but first, you must have the clarity and courage to identify them.
In the US, at least, this shouldn't be too complicated, for their crimes are mostly out in
the open, and their enforcers appear nightly in your living room, not unlike 1984. As you
watch, they cheerfully lie, silence witnesses, mass murder, squander your last cent and
dismantle, brick by brick, the house your forefathers built and died defending. Even if all
they saw was its basement, it was still their everything.
Lexicologically, Jack London far surpasses Orwell. He mixes erudite and argot. Stylistically
London far surpassed anything Orwell ever came up with. Orwell is a man of unum librum.
Nor would I say Orwell was a better thinker than London. 1984 is partly inspired by the
Iron Heel, an image coined by London in a namesake book.
Reducing London to being a mere "socialist" is moronic.
London is one of those authors whom aesthetes despise, but who- against all odds- stubbornly
refuse to go away. When he wrote about "serious" topics, London was a failure (Burning
Daylight, Martin Eden, ); on the other hand, when he wrote about animals, primitives,
mentally impaired, (white) underclass & quasi-fascist-Darwinian fantasies (most stories
& short novels) -he was an unavoidable writer, one that will be read long after most
canonized authors are just a footnote.
By the way, he was extremely popular even in Czarist Russia, something along the lines of
American vitalism & energy.
Jack London's "The Iron Heel" is another of his fictional stories about the working classes
and in the book he attacks capitalism and promotes socialism while presenting the story of
the US turned into an oligarchy in 1913 (the book was written in 1907). What's interesting
about "The Iron Heel" is that by 1900 it must have been quite obvious as to how the world's
more powerful nations were planning on parceling up the world, and London makes reference to
this in his novel about the future military campaigns that will take place in the book's
dystopian future, and his fiction was not far wrong from what actually transpired in WW1 and
WW2.
After Jack London gained fame he did not work alone, he hired aspiring writers to
"fill-in" his fiction, much like famous painters painting large commissions would hire
subordinates to "fill-in" their canvas after the outline was drawn. The plot and subplots
would come from London, but his underlings would write the stories. At this point in time I
can't remember the names but as I recall a few famous authors got their start working for
Jack London.
London was also cursed with the writer's nemesis, he was an alcoholic, and his
autobiographical novel "John Barleycorn" treats the "demon drink" as one of the world's great
ills. The book being published in 1913, it is noteworthy that the eighteenth amendment
banning alcohol was passed by congress a few years later in 1919, so it could be that London
was at least a minor fulcrum in giving a push to the moral crusade against alcohol being sold
in the US.
Much of Jack London's work is classic like his short story fiction placed in Alaska, "To
Start a Fire" about a man exposed to the elements and slowly freezing to death, or his
fictional tales about being a constable sailing a schooner chasing pirates off the coast of
California. Also unique and thrilling is the short story "A Piece of Steak" about an aging
boxer hoping to win one last fight. These were tough and gritty stories about men at their
extremity, and not tales for children.
London wrote a good tale and he understood human nature, and perhaps that's what motivated
him to become an alcoholic socialist.
@Bardon
Kaldian I enjoyed much of London's works. Although I read many of his books when
young,and I don't remember them too much, they helped inspire me to head north in the very
backyard of Burning Daylight, a best seller in it's day. His portrayal of characters of the
North seem quite believable and his description of the land and it's peculiar traits are also
accurate. The short story 'All Gold Canyon' is spot on for how a prospector prospects.
I read the Jack London Reader (for sale in Chicken, ak) a few years ago and enjoyed it
immensely as I did the Sea Wolf.
Martin Eden is a depressing read. I have only read Animal Farm so I really can't compare.
Depends how much one 'likes' to get disgruntled.
Cocooned, Americans are oblivious to their own destruction. Screwed, they're fixated by
Pornhub.
Funny, all I ever read on the Internet these days are articles about America's
destruction. This article's another one. Yet according to some pouty guy on the other side of
the planet, we're oblivious.
And Pornhub is #32 according to Alexa. That's really high, but 31 websites precede it.
I've never visited Pornhub, and I'd bet neither have 9 out of 10 Americans. Eliminate kids
under 10, adults over 80, most women, and all those without Internet access, and you're left
with a core of certain primetime lusty guys who are comfortable with pornography. Couldn't be
more than 10%.
It'd be wonderful if we could have a single calendar day, say October 21, when everyone
declares a moratorium on blithely shitting on America. Or is this part of the Jewish strategy
to keep us divided and unhappy?
"London was also a newsboy, longshoreman, roustabout, window washer, jute mill grunt, carpet
cleaner and electrician" and – not least – SPORTSWRITER!John Griffith Chaney
packed a lot of experience into his short forty year span on this wretched earth but his
stint on the Oakland Herald & later sports writing – especially about surfing
– are some of his best & consistent with his own fiery enjoyment of active outdoor
sports. Perhaps best summed up in his aphorism:"I would rather be ashes than dust." London
was not known for being a soccer fan but nonetheless, he would probably still be pleased to
know that there is in his hometown today a very large & thriving Jack London Youth Soccer
League. Anybody's guess how long it will be before the Woke Folk in town try to shut it down
for being named after a 'white supremacist'.
Eric Arthur Blair had a similarly short stay in this world – only seven more years than
London – but didn't much share his enthusiasm for the sporting life. Orwell was quite
candid in his rejection of the world's favorite past time, explaining in an essay: "I loathed
the game, and since I could see no pleasure or usefulness in it, it was very difficult for me
to show courage at it. Football, it seemed to me, is not really played for the pleasure of
kicking a ball about, but is a species of fighting." Orwell was even more pointed in a London
Tribune op-ed during his early newspaper days, commenting on a recent series of matches
between a Russian & English clubs, " the games cult did not start till the later part of
the last century. Dr Arnold, generally regarded as the founder of the modern public school,
looked on games as simply a waste of time. Then, chiefly in England and the United States,
games were built up into a heavily-financed activity, capable of attracting vast crowds and
rousing savage passions, and the infection spread from country to country. It is the most
violently combative sports, football and boxing, that have spread the widest. There cannot be
much doubt that the whole thing is bound up with the rise of nationalism -- that is, with the
lunatic modern habit of identifying oneself with large power units and seeing everything in
terms of competitive prestige."
"Orwell understood this well. It is the biggest crime to wreck anyone's heritage in a
flash."
Or beat their national team. Go Golden Dragons!
When I read about a woman dying from a rooster attack, or people falling to their death to
take selfies, or the growing number of hikers who venture out into semi- wilderness with
their cell phones but not adequate water, I always think of London's "To Build a Fire."
If London observed man's diminished capacity to measure and survive nature in his era,
what would he make of any airport or street today? Like the parasite creature in "Alien",
phones are stuck to every face encountered. Most people are not "present" in any sense when
in the public sphere now, let alone taking note of the world around them.
Great essay. I made it a point to visit Jack London's ranch on a California visit. The ranch
was a huge unfulfilled project with the sad burnt out ruins of his dream house reminding us
of his grand plans. The condition of his grown-over untended grave startled me. I find it
interesting that many men of that time viewed socialism as a panacea; however, the intellect,
ambition and energy of a man like Jack London would never have survived the ideology he
espoused.
@Paul Did
you see the "Trotsky" miniseries on Netflix? It was in Russian with English subtitles, but I
enjoyed reading them all and found it riveting. It appeared to be historically accurate to
someone like me who knows little of Russian history. Trotsky (born Lev Bronstein) was a
Ukrainian Jew who cared little for how many Russians he killed. I guess Ukies hated Russians
even back then.
In each society, you can begin to right the ship by prosecuting the biggest criminals,
with existing laws, but first, you must have the clarity and courage to identify them.
This is why I don't get your disgust at President Trump. He has the will and the position
to do just as you recommend and he would do it if the ruling class weren't trying to cut him
off at the knees 24-7. Trump is the people's first successful attempt to drive the destroyers
from the forum. I fear for coming generations if he doesn't.
@simple_pseudonymic_handle
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Herman Melville
Walt Whitman
Mark Twain
Stephen Crane
T.S. Eliot
Henry James
Tennessee Williams
Saul Bellow
John Updike
I wish the author would have done an analysis of London's "Iron Heel." I just read it for
the first time, and what he was writing about 100 years ago on the dominance of the
"oligarchs", i.e., the "iron heel" rings as true today as it did back then.
Curious also how he died so suddenly. There is a YouTube video of him at his ranch looking
as healthy as can be only a couple of days before he mysteriously died.
@AaronB
An empire exploits and abuses all natives, including those of its host nation. Just think of
how they must send these natives to foreign lands, not just to kill, but die. It's better to
be a house slave than a field one, however, so many far flung subjects of the empire will try
to sneak into the house. It's also safer there, generally. Except for rare instances, as in
9/11, the empire won't blow up natives inside its borders.
World War II ended nearly three generations ago, and few of its adult survivors still walk
the earth. From one perspective the true facts of that conflict and whether or not they
actually contradict our traditional beliefs might appear rather irrelevant. Tearing down the
statues of some long-dead historical figures and replacing them with the statues of others
hardly seems of much practical value.
But if we gradually conclude that the story that all of us have been told during our entire
lifetimes is substantially false and perhaps largely inverted, the implications for our
understanding of the world are enormous. Most of the surprising material presented here is
hardly hidden or kept under lock-and-key. Nearly all the books are easily available at Amazon
or even freely readable on the Internet, many of the authors have received critical and
scholarly acclaim, and in some cases their works have sold in the millions.
Yet this important material has been almost entirely ignored or dismissed by the popular
media that shapes the common beliefs of our society. So we must necessarily begin to wonder
what other massive falsehoods may have been similarly promoted by that media, perhaps involving
incidents of the recent past or even the present day. And those latter events do have enormous
practical significance. As I pointed out several years ago in my original American Pravda article :
Aside from the evidence of our own senses, almost everything we know about the past or the
news of today comes from bits of ink on paper or colored pixels on a screen, and fortunately
over the last decade or two the growth of the Internet has vastly widened the range of
information available to us in that latter category. Even if the overwhelming majority of the
unorthodox claims provided by such non-traditional web-based sources is incorrect, at least
there now exists the possibility of extracting vital nuggets of truth from vast mountains of
falsehood.
We must also recognize that many of the fundamental ideas that dominate our present-day
world were founded upon a particular understanding of that wartime history, and if there seems
good reason to believe that narrative is substantially false, perhaps we should begin
questioning the framework of beliefs erected upon it.
ORDER IT NOW
George Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War during the 1930s and discovered that the true
facts in Spain were radically different from what he had been led to believe by the British
media of his day. In 1948 these past experiences together with the rapidly congealing "official
history" of the Second World War may have been uppermost in his mind when he published his
classic novel 1984, which famously declared that "Who controls the past controls the future;
who controls the present controls the past."
Great article, thank you. The WWII legend is sacrosanct because it is the founding myth of
the empire that replaced our republic, just as the Founders predicted would be the result of
choosing sides in foreign conflicts. Is seems credible to think that FDR enabled Churchill's
blood lust because encouraging the seriously weakened British empire to finish committing
suicide by engaging in another ground war in Europe would clear the way for the US to finally
replace the hated mother country as the world's great power- just as another faction of the
Founders dreamed. The motto on our National Seal "Novus Ordo Seclorum" is quoted from
Virgil's Eclogues, where it is the prophecy of the Cumaean Sybil that Rome was destined to
rule the world.
Historian Murray Rothbard best described the impact of the war in this obituary he wrote
for fellow popular historian Harry Elmer Barnes, "Our entry into World War II was the crucial
act in foisting a permanent militarization upon the economy and society, in bringing to the
country a permanent garrison state, an overweening military-industrial complex, a permanent
system of conscription. It was the crucial act in expanding the United States from a republic
into an Empire, and in spreading that Empire throughout the world, replacing the sagging
British Empire in the process. It was the crucial act in creating a Mixed Economy run by Big
Government, a system of State-Monopoly-Capitalism run by the central government in
collaboration with Big Business and Big Unionism. It was the crucial act in elevating
Presidential power, particularly in foreign affairs, to the role of single most despotic
person in the history of the world. And, finally, World War II is the last war-myth left, the
myth that the Old Left clings to in pure desperation: the myth that here, at least, was a
good war, here was a war in which America was in the right. World War II is the war thrown
into our faces by the war-making Establishment, as it tries, in each war that we face, to
wrap itself in the mantle of good and righteous World War II."
For those who lack the time to read these books, or even this great essay, here is a
13-minute video summary. For those shocked by this information, return and read this entire
essay, then the books if you still fail to understand that history has been distorted.
"Although Saddam Hussein clearly had no connection to the attacks, his status as a
possible regional rival to Israel had established him as their top target, and they soon
began beating the drums for war, with America finally launching its disastrous invasion in
February 2003."
I agree that replacing a progressive Arab leader with an Anglo-American puppet government
was an important factor, but the return of Iraqi oil fields to Anglo-American control was the
main objective. Exxon-Mobil, Shell, Total, and British Petroleum are now the biggest
producers of Iraqi oil.:
Thank You to Mr. Unz for mentioning the long-forgotten hero of the America First Committee,
John T. Flynn.
His biography, by Michele Stenehjem Gerber, is called An American First: John T. Flynn
and the America First Committee and has not yet been banned on Amazon:
Nonetheless I read it years ago, and it confirmed my suspicion that Lillian Gish,
pioneering film actress, was on a blacklist of some sort, and indeed she was. And this was
years before her name was removed from a college building here in Ohio. It is short, not hard
to read, less a full biography of Flynn than an interesting look at that filthy period in US
history when non-interventionists were slimed as "isolationists" and had their reputations
ruined. Or at least dinged quite a bit.
From an Amazon review:
This book inspires the broadening of the America First discussion, making references to
Lillian Gish, who proved she was blacklisted , Charlie Chaplin, whose The Great
Dictator was itself attacked as propaganda, and the charges of anti-Semitism from some
names not already researched, like Brooklyn Dodgers' president Larry MacPhail, S. H. Hauk,
Laura Ingalls, and Wilhelm Kunze of the German-American Bund (but still no Walt Disney
I went to Cambridge University in 1966 to study history. Two things I recall very distinctly:
the powerful impression Taylor's books made on me; and the very subtle but unmistakable
deprecation my tutors and lecturers applied to him and his work.
Taylor was certainly very talented, they said, but prone to "bees in his bonnet";
over-enthusiastic; sometimes unreliable.
Looking back, I can see how very effective this treatment was. As a rebellious and
iconoclastic 18-year-old, if I had been told that Taylor was wicked and wrong and I must
ignore his books, I would have hurried to study them deeply. But since I was cleverly
informed that he was just mildly eccentric and prone to unjustified speculation, I neglected
him in order to concentrate on the many other writers we had to read.
Most of the surprising material presented here is hardly hidden or kept under
lock-and-key. Nearly all the books are easily available at Amazon or even freely readable
on the Internet, many of the authors have received critical and scholarly acclaim, and in
some cases their works have sold in the millions. Yet this important material has been
almost entirely ignored or dismissed by the popular media that shapes the common beliefs of
our society. So we must necessarily begin to wonder what other massive falsehoods may have
been similarly promoted by that media, perhaps involving incidents of the recent past or
even the present day. And those latter events do have enormous practical significance.
Being the Guardian, of course, their prescription is that people should make a more
sincere effort to support the Reporters of Truth, such as the Guardian. In their retrograde
Left vs Right world, it's still up to the 'goodthinkers' to preserve our liberties from the
Boris Johnsons and Donald Trumps of the world. Never in a million years would they entertain
the possibility that Johnsons and Trumps come about because the Establishment–most
certainly including its MSM lackeys–is corrupt to its core.
As the Washington Post has it, "Democracy Dies in Darkness" -- neglecting to add, "We
supply the Darkness."
So now, instead of now [erroneously] believing, as we were all , er, "taught", that the
allies were the good guys of WW2, and that the Japs and Germans were the bad guys, we are now
supposed to believe the exact opposite, right, Mr Unz ? Jap and German governments now"good"-
WW2 allies governments now "bad"?
Reality fact: before, during and after WW2 and all the way up to this present
moment in time, the US, Soviet, French , Polish, Brit [etc. etc. ad infinitum] governments
lied; the German government lied, the Jap government lied. They ALL lied [and lie]!
Reality fact: It [lying] is what all governments everywhere all do – , all of
the time!
Reality fact: It's what they _must_ do to maintain power over their slave
populations [ see the Bernays quote below].
Regarding the fundamental nature of all governments, past, present, or future – this
"just" in :
"Because they are all ultimately funded via both direct and indirect theft [taxes], and
counterfeiting [via central bank monopolies], all governments are essentially, at their very
cores, 100% corrupt criminal scams which cannot be "reformed","improved", nor "limited" in
scope, simply because of their innate criminal nature." onebornfree
" The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the
masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen
mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our
country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested,
largely by men we have never heard of." Edward Bernays http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Bernays_Propaganda_in_english_.pdf
"The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their
power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must
be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of
the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan." ~ Adolf Hitler
"My first rule- I don't believe anything the government tells me- nothing!- ZERO!" George
Carlin
@Tom67
Thank God we American's were pillars morality. LOL
Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he followed the progress of the
American eugenics movement. "I have studied with great interest," he told a fellow Nazi,
"the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose
progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."
Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenic leader Madison Grant calling his
race-based eugenics book, The Passing of the Great Race his "bible."
Those measures are nothing special. They are typical for any war or any coup d'état to install totalitarian regime in the
country. Fritened people are easily manipulated. . The only question against whom the war was launched and what was real origin of
9/11. Here 1984 instantly comes to mind.
Next week will be the
18th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Politicians and bureaucrats wasted no time after that
carnage to unleash the Surveillance State on average Americans, treating every person like a
terrorist suspect.
Since the government failed to protect the public, Americans somehow
forfeited their constitutional right to privacy. Despite heroic efforts by former NSA staffer
Edward Snowden and a host of activists and freedom fighters, the government continues ravaging
American privacy.
Two of the largest leaps towards "1984" began in 2002.
Though neither the
Justice Department's Operation TIPS nor the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program was
brought to completion, parcels and precedents from each program have profoundly influenced
subsequent federal policies.
In July 2002, the Justice Department unveiled plans for Operation TIPS -- the Terrorism
Information and Prevention System.
According to the Justice Department website, TIPS would
be "a nationwide program giving millions of American truckers, letter carriers, train conductors,
ship captains, utility employees, and others a formal way to report suspicious terrorist activity."
TIPSters would be people who, "in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to serve
as extra eyes and ears for law enforcement." The feds aimed to recruit people in jobs that "make
them uniquely well positioned to understand the ordinary course of business in the area they serve,
and to identify things that are out of the ordinary." Homeland Security director Tom Ridge said
that observers in certain occupations "might pick up a break in the certain rhythm or pattern of a
community." The feds planned to enlist as many as 10 million people to watch other people's
"rhythms."
The Justice Department provided no definition of "suspicious behavior" to guide
vigilantes.
As
the public began to focus on the program's sweep, opposition surfaced; even the U.S. Postal Service
briefly balked at participating in the program. Director Ridge insisted that TIPS "is not a
government intrusion." He declared, "The last thing we want is Americans spying on Americans.
That's just not what the president is all about, and not what the TIPS program is all about."
Apparently, as long as the Bush administration did not announce plans to compel people to testify
about the peccadilloes of their neighbors and customers, TIPS was a certified freedom-friendly
program.
When Attorney General John Ashcroft was cross-examined by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) on TIPS at
a Judiciary Committee hearing on July 25, he insisted that
"the TIPS program is
something requested by industry to allow them to talk about anomalies that they encounter."
But, when George W. Bush first announced the program, he portrayed it as an administration
initiative. Did thousands of Teamsters Union members petition 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue over
"anomalies"? Senator Leahy asked whether reports to the TIPS hotline would become part of a federal
database with millions of unsubstantiated allegations against American citizens.
Ashcroft told Leahy, "I have recommended that there would be none, and I've been given assurance
that the TIPS program would not maintain a database." But Ashcroft could not reveal which federal
official had given him the assurance.
The ACLU's Laura Murphy observed,
"This is a program where people's activities,
statements, posters in their windows or on their walls, nationality, and religious practices will
be reported by untrained individuals without any relationship to criminal activity."
San Diego law professor Marjorie Cohn observed, "Operation TIPS will encourage neighbors to
snitch on neighbors and won't distinguish between real and fabricated tips. Anyone with a grudge or
vendetta against another can provide false information to the government, which will then enter the
national database."
On August 9, the Justice Department announced it was fine-tuning TIPS, abandoning any "plan to
ask thousands of mail carriers, utility workers, and others with access to private homes to report
suspected terrorist activity," the
Washington Post
reported. People who had enlisted to be
TIPSters received an email notice from Uncle Sam that "only those who work in the trucking,
maritime, shipping, and mass transit industries will be eligible to participate in this information
referral service." But the Justice Department continued refusing to disclose to the Senate
Judiciary Committee who would have access to the TIPS reports.
After the proposal created a fierce backlash across the political board, Congress passed
an amendment blocking its creation.
House Majority Leader Richard Armey (R-Tex.) attached
an amendment to homeland security legislation that declared, "Any and all activities of the federal
government to implement the proposed component program of the Citizen Corps known as Operation TIPS
are hereby prohibited." But the Bush administration and later the Obama administration pursued the
same information roundup with federally funded fusion centers that encouraged people to file
"suspicious activity reports" for a wide array of innocuous behavior -- reports that are dumped into
secret federal databases that can vex innocent citizens in perpetuity.
Operation TIPS illustrated how the momentum of intrusion spurred government to propose
programs that it never would have attempted before 9/11.
If Bush had proposed in August
2001 to recruit 10 million Americans to report any of their neighbors they suspected of acting
unusual or being potential troublemakers, the public might have concluded the president had gone
berserk.
Total Information Awareness: 300 million dossiers
The USA PATRIOT Act created a new Information Office in the Pentagon's Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
In January 2002, the White House chose retired admiral
John Poindexter to head the new office. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer explained, "Admiral
Poindexter is somebody who this administration thinks is an outstanding American, an outstanding
citizen, who has done a very good job in what he has done for our country, serving the military."
Cynics kvetched about Poindexter's five felony convictions for false testimony to Congress
and destruction of evidence during the investigation of the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages exchange.
Poindexter's convictions were overturned by a federal appeals court, which cited the immunity
Congress granted his testimony.
Poindexter committed the new Pentagon office to achieving Total Information Awareness (TIA).
TIA's mission is "to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists -- and decipher their plans --
and thereby enable the U.S. to take timely action to successfully preempt and defeat terrorist
acts,"
according to DARPA. According to Undersecretary of Defense Pete Aldridge, TIA would
seek to discover "connections between transactions -- such as passports; visas; work permits;
driver's licenses; credit cards; airline tickets; rental cars; gun purchases; chemical purchases --
and events -- such as arrests or suspicious activities and so forth." Aldridge agreed that every
phone call a person made or received could be entered into the database. With "voice recognition"
software, the actual text of the call could also go onto a permanent record.
TIA would also strive to achieve "Human Identification at a Distance" (HumanID),
including "Face Recognition," "Iris Recognition," and "Gait Recognition."
The Pentagon
issued a request for proposals to develop an "odor recognition" surveillance system that would help
the feds identify people by their sweat or urine -- potentially creating a wealth of new job
opportunities for deviants.
TIA's goal was to stockpile as much information as possible about everyone on Earth -- thereby
allowing government to protect everyone from everything.
New York Times
columnist William
Safire captured the sweep of the new surveillance system: "Every purchase you make with a credit
card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you
visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you
make, every trip you book, and every event you attend -- all these transactions and communications
will go into what the Defense Department describes as 'a virtual, centralized grand database.'"
Columnist Ted Rall noted that the feds would even scan "veterinary records. The TIA believes that
knowing if and when Fluffy got spayed -- and whether your son stopped torturing Fluffy after you put
him on Ritalin -- will help the military stop terrorists before they strike."
Phil Kent, president of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, an Atlanta-based public-interest law
firm, warned that TIA was "the most sweeping threat to civil liberties since the Japanese-American
internment." The ACLU's Jay Stanley labeled TIA "the mother of all privacy invasions. It would
amount to a picture of your life so complete, it's equivalent to somebody following you around all
day with a video camera." A coalition of civil-liberties groups protested to Senate leaders, "There
are no systems of oversight or accountability contemplated in the TIA project. DARPA itself has
resisted lawful requests for information about the Program pursuant to the Freedom of Information
Act."
Bush administration officials were outraged by such criticisms.
Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared, "The hype and alarm approach is a disservice to the public . I
would recommend people take a nice deep breath. Nothing terrible is going to happen." Poindexter
promised that TIA would be designed so as to "preserve rights and protect people's privacy while
helping to make us all safer." (Poindexter was not under oath at the time of his statement.) The
TIA was defended on the basis that "nobody has been searched" until the feds decide to have him
arrested on the basis of data the feds snared. Undersecretary Aldridge declared, "It is absurd to
think that DARPA is somehow trying to become another police agency. DARPA's purpose is to
demonstrate the feasibility of this technology. If it proves useful, TIA will then be turned over
to the intelligence, counterintelligence, and law-enforcement communities as a tool to help them in
their battle against domestic terrorism." In January 2003, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) learned
that the FBI was working on a memorandum of understanding with the Pentagon "for possible
experimentation" with TIA. Assistant Defense Secretary for Homeland Security Paul McHale confirmed,
in March 2003 testimony to Congress, that the Pentagon would turn TIA over to law-enforcement
agencies once the system was ready to roll.
DARPA responded to the surge of criticism by removing the Information Awareness Office
logo from the website.
The logo showed a giant green eye atop a pyramid, covering half the
globe with a peculiar yellow haze, accompanied by the motto "Scientia est Potentia" (Knowledge is
Power).
Shortly after DARPA completed a key research benchmark for TIA, Lt. Col. Doug Dyer, a DARPA
program manager, publicly announced in April 2003 that Americans are obliged to sacrifice some
privacy in the name of security:
"When you consider the potential effect of a terrorist
attack against the privacy of an entire population, there has to be some trade-off."
But nothing in the U.S. Constitution entitles the Defense Department to decide how much privacy or
liberty American citizens deserve.
In September 2003, Congress passed an amendment abolishing the Pentagon's Information Office and
ending TIA funding. But by that point, DARPA had already awarded 26 contracts for dozens of private
research projects to develop components for TIA. Salon.com reported,
"According to
people with knowledge of the program, TIA has now advanced to the point where it's much more than a
mere 'research project.' There is a working prototype of the system, and federal agencies outside
the Defense Department have expressed interest in it."
The U.S. Customs and Border
Patrol is already using facial recognition systems at 20 airports and the Transportation Security
Administration is expected to quickly follow suit.
Two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo sent a secret memo
to the White House declaring that the Constitution's prohibition on unreasonable searches was null
and void:
"If the government's heightened interest in self-defense justifies the use of
deadly force, then it also certainly would justify warrantless searches."
That memo
helped set federal policy until it was publicly revealed after Barack Obama took office in 2009.
Unfortunately, that anti-Constitution, anti-privacy mindset unleashed many federal intrusions that
continue to this day, from the TSA to the National Security Agency to the FBI and Department of
Homeland Security.
In our time, we are endlessly brainwashed to love all the things that we can buy.
Meanwhile, people are being bombed, terrorized, sanctioned, etc. across the world ... We
can't complain since we got lots of toys to play with.
And here I think one has an enormous area in which the ultimate revolution could
function very well indeed, an area in which a great deal of control could be used by not
through terror, but by making life seem much more enjoyable than it normally does.
Enjoyable to the point, where as I said before, Human beings come to love a state of things
by which any reasonable and decent human standard they ought not to love and this I think
is perfectly possible.
"Happiness" with our toys is being used to keep us quiet.
"The dictatorships of tomorrow will deprive men of their freedom, but will give them in
exchange a happiness none the less real, as a subjective experience, for being chemically
induced. The pursuit of happiness is one of the traditional rights of man; unfortunately,
the achievement of happiness may turn out to be incompatible with another of man's rights
-- namely, liberty."
...press has complete control to filter everything to look rosey for them, demonize any
dissidents, and the masses fall for it. Why? They do not allow any counter arguments...
A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive
of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not
have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.
...bread and circus propaganda. They want to keep that way. Any one who dissents is a
"hater".
What I may call the messages of Brave New World, but it is possible to make people
contented with their servitude. I think this can be done. I think it has been done in the
past. I think it could be done even more effectively now because you can provide them with
bread and circuses and you can provide them with endless amounts of distractions and
propaganda.
...Pleasure trick keeps one from looking at what our rulers are doing.
As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends correspondingly to
increase. And the dictator will do well to encourage that freedom it will help to reconcile
his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.
...using their MSM to make massive herds of humans all over the earth to love their
servitude to Zion uber alles.
The question of the next generation will not be one of how to liberate the masses, but
rather, how to make them love their servitude
"... Defensive programming is a method of prevention, rather than a form of cure. Compare this to debugging -- the act of removing bugs after they've bitten. Debugging is all about finding a cure. ..."
"... Defensive programming saves you literally hours of debugging and lets you do more fun stuff instead. Remember Murphy: If your code can be used incorrectly, it will be. ..."
"... Working code that runs properly, but ever-so-slightly slower, is far superior to code that works most of the time but occasionally collapses in a shower of brightly colored sparks ..."
"... Defensive programming avoids a large number of security problems -- a serious issue in modern software development. ..."
Okay, defensive programming won't remove program failures altogether. But problems will become less of a hassle and easier to fix.
Defensive programmers catch falling snowflakes rather than get buried under an avalanche of errors.
Defensive programming is a method of prevention, rather than a form of cure. Compare this to debugging -- the act of removing
bugs after they've bitten. Debugging is all about finding a cure.
WHAT DEFENSIVE PROGRAMMING ISN'T
There are a few common misconceptions about defensive programming . Defensive programming is not:
Error checking
If there are error conditions that might arise in your code, you should be checking for them anyway. This is not defensive
code. It's just plain good practice -- a part of writing correct code.
Testing
Testing your code is not defensive . It's another normal part of our development work. Test harnesses aren't defensive ; they
can prove the code is correct now, but won't prove that it will stand up to future modification. Even with the best test suite
in the world, anyone can make a change and slip it past untested.
Debugging
You might add some defensive code during a spell of debugging, but debugging is something you do after your program has failed.
Defensive programming is something you do to prevent your program from failing in the first place (or to detect failures
early before they manifest in incomprehensible ways, demanding all-night debugging sessions).
Is defensive programming really worth the hassle? There are arguments for and against:
The case against
Defensive programming consumes resources, both yours and the computer's.
It eats into the efficiency of your code; even a little extra code requires a little extra execution. For a single function
or class, this might not matter, but when you have a system made up of 100,000 functions, you may have more of a problem.
Each defensive practice requires some extra work. Why should you follow any of them? You have enough to do already, right?
Just make sure people use your code correctly. If they don't, then any problems are their own fault.
The case for
The counterargument is compelling.
Defensive programming saves you literally hours of debugging and lets you do more fun stuff instead. Remember Murphy: If
your code can be used incorrectly, it will be.
Working code that runs properly, but ever-so-slightly slower, is far superior to code that works most of the time
but occasionally collapses in a shower of brightly colored sparks.
We can design some defensive code to be physically removed in release builds, circumventing the performance issue. The
majority of the items we'll consider here don't have any significant overhead, anyway.
Defensive programming avoids a large number of security problems -- a serious issue in modern software development. More
on this follows.
As the market demands software that's built faster and cheaper, we need to focus on techniques that deliver results. Don't skip
the bit of extra work up front that will prevent a whole world of pain and delay later.
There is one danger to defensive coding: It can bury errors. Consider the following
code:
def drawLine(m, b, image, start = 0, stop = WIDTH):
step = 1
start = int(start)
stop = int(stop)
if stop-start < 0:
step = -1
print('WARNING: drawLine parameters were reversed.')
for x in range(start, stop, step):
index = int(m*x + b) * WIDTH + x
if 0 <= index < len(image):
image[index] = 255 # Poke in a white (= 255) pixel.
This function runs from start to stop . If stop is less than start , it just steps backward
and no error is reported .
Maybe we want this kind of error to be "fixed " during the
run -- buried -- but I think we should at least print a warning that the range is coming in
backwards. Maybe we should abort the program .
"... Code installed for defensive programming is not immune to defects, and you're just as likely to find a defect in defensive-programming code as in any other code -- more likely, if you write the code casually. Think about where you need to be defensive , and set your defensive-programming priorities accordingly. ..."
Originally from: Code Complete, Second Edition II. Creating High-Quality Code
8.3. Error-Handling Techniques
Too much of anything is bad, but too much whiskey is just enough. -- Mark Twain
Too much defensive programming creates problems of its own. If you check data passed as parameters in every conceivable way in
every conceivable place, your program will be fat and slow.
What's worse, the additional code needed for defensive programming adds
complexity to the software.
Code installed for defensive programming is not immune to defects, and you're just as likely to find
a defect in defensive-programming code as in any other code -- more likely, if you write the code casually. Think about where you
need to be defensive , and set your defensive-programming priorities accordingly.
Defensive Programming
General
Does the routine protect itself from bad input data?
Have you used assertions to document assumptions, including preconditions and postconditions?
Have assertions been used only to document conditions that should never occur?
Does the architecture or high-level design specify a specific set of error-handling techniques?
Does the architecture or high-level design specify whether error handling should favor robustness or correctness?
Have barricades been created to contain the damaging effect of errors and reduce the amount of code that has to be concerned
about error processing?
Have debugging aids been used in the code?
Have debugging aids been installed in such a way that they can be activated or deactivated without a great deal of fuss?
Is the amount of defensive programming code appropriate -- neither too much nor too little?
Have you used offensive- programming techniques to make errors difficult to overlook during development?
Exceptions
Has your project defined a standardized approach to exception handling?
Have you considered alternatives to using an exception?
Is the error handled locally rather than throwing a nonlocal exception, if possible?
Does the code avoid throwing exceptions in constructors and destructors?
Are all exceptions at the appropriate levels of abstraction for the routines that throw them?
Does each exception include all relevant exception background information?
Is the code free of empty catch blocks? (Or if an empty catch block truly is appropriate, is it documented?)
Security Issues
Does the code that checks for bad input data check for attempted buffer overflows, SQL injection, HTML injection, integer
overflows, and other malicious inputs?
Are all error-return codes checked?
Are all exceptions caught?
Do error messages avoid providing information that would help an attacker break into the system?
Assertions as special statement is questionable approach unless there is a switch to exclude them from the code. Other
then that BASH exit with condition or Perl die can serve equally well.
The main question here is which assertions should be in code only for debugging and which should be in production.
Notable quotes:
"... That an input parameter's value falls within its expected range (or an output parameter's value does) ..."
"... Many languages have built-in support for assertions, including C++, Java, and Microsoft Visual Basic. If your language doesn't directly support assertion routines, they are easy to write. The standard C++ assert macro doesn't provide for text messages. Here's an example of an improved ASSERT implemented as a C++ macro: ..."
"... Use assertions to document and verify preconditions and postconditions. Preconditions and postconditions are part of an approach to program design and development known as "design by contract" (Meyer 1997). When preconditions and postconditions are used, each routine or class forms a contract with the rest of the program . ..."
An assertion is code that's used during development -- usually a routine or macro -- that allows a program to check itself as
it runs. When an assertion is true, that means everything is operating as expected. When it's false, that means it has detected an
unexpected error in the code. For example, if the system assumes that a customerinformation file will never have more than 50,000
records, the program might contain an assertion that the number of records is less than or equal to 50,000. As long as the number
of records is less than or equal to 50,000, the assertion will be silent. If it encounters more than 50,000 records, however, it
will loudly "assert" that an error is in the program .
Assertions are especially useful in large, complicated programs and in high-reliability programs . They enable programmers to
more quickly flush out mismatched interface assumptions, errors that creep in when code is modified, and so on.
An assertion usually takes two arguments: a boolean expression that describes the assumption that's supposed to be true, and a
message to display if it isn't. Here's what a Java assertion would look like if the variable denominator were expected to
be nonzero:
Example 8-1. Java Example of an Assertion
assert denominator != 0 : "denominator is unexpectedly equal to 0.";
This assertion asserts that denominator is not equal to 0 . The first argument, denominator != 0 , is a boolean
expression that evaluates to true or false . The second argument is a message to print if the first argument is
false -- that is, if the assertion is false.
Use assertions to document assumptions made in the code and to flush out unexpected conditions. Assertions can be used to check
assumptions like these:
That an input parameter's value falls within its expected range (or an output parameter's value does)
That a file or stream is open (or closed) when a routine begins executing (or when it ends executing)
That a file or stream is at the beginning (or end) when a routine begins executing (or when it ends executing)
That a file or stream is open for read-only, write-only, or both read and write
That the value of an input-only variable is not changed by a routine
That a pointer is non-null
That an array or other container passed into a routine can contain at least X number of data elements
That a table has been initialized to contain real values
That a container is empty (or full) when a routine begins executing (or when it finishes)
That the results from a highly optimized, complicated routine match the results from a slower but clearly written routine
Of course, these are just the basics, and your own routines will contain many more specific assumptions that you can document
using assertions.
Normally, you don't want users to see assertion messages in production code; assertions are primarily for use during development
and maintenance. Assertions are normally compiled into the code at development time and compiled out of the code for production.
During development, assertions flush out contradictory assumptions, unexpected conditions, bad values passed to routines, and so
on. During production, they can be compiled out of the code so that the assertions don't degrade system performance.
Building Your Own Assertion Mechanism
Many languages have built-in support for assertions, including C++, Java, and Microsoft Visual Basic. If your language doesn't
directly support assertion routines, they are easy to write. The standard C++ assert macro doesn't provide for text messages.
Here's an example of an improved ASSERT implemented as a C++ macro:
Cross-Reference
Building your own assertion routine is a good example of programming "into" a language rather than just programming "in" a language.
For more details on this distinction, see
Program into Your
Language, Not in It .
Use error-handling code for conditions you expect to occur; use assertions for conditions that should. never occur Assertions
check for conditions that should never occur. Error-handling code checks for off-nominal circumstances that might not occur
very often, but that have been anticipated by the programmer who wrote the code and that need to be handled by the production code.
Error handling typically checks for bad input data; assertions check for bugs in the code.
If error-handling code is used to address an anomalous condition, the error handling will enable the program to respond to the
error gracefully. If an assertion is fired for an anomalous condition, the corrective action is not merely to handle an error gracefully
-- the corrective action is to change the program's source code, recompile, and release a new version of the software.
A good way to think of assertions is as executable documentation -- you can't rely on them to make the code work, but they can
document assumptions more actively than program -language comments can.
Avoid putting executable code into assertions. Putting code into an assertion raises the possibility that the compiler will eliminate
the code when you turn off the assertions. Suppose you have an assertion like this:
Example 8-3. Visual Basic Example of a Dangerous Use of an Assertion
The problem with this code is that, if you don't compile the assertions, you don't compile the code that performs the action.
Put executable statements on their own lines, assign the results to status variables, and test the status variables instead. Here's
an example of a safe use of an assertion:
Example 8-4. Visual Basic Example of a Safe Use of an Assertion
Use assertions to document and verify preconditions and postconditions. Preconditions and postconditions are part of an approach
to program design and development known as "design by contract" (Meyer 1997). When preconditions and postconditions are used, each
routine or class forms a contract with the rest of the program .
Further Reading
For much more on preconditions and postconditions, see Object-Oriented Software Construction (Meyer 1997).
Preconditions are the properties that the client code of a routine or class promises will be true before it calls the routine
or instantiates the object. Preconditions are the client code's obligations to the code it calls.
Postconditions are the properties that the routine or class promises will be true when it concludes executing. Postconditions
are the routine's or class's obligations to the code that uses it.
Assertions are a useful tool for documenting preconditions and postconditions. Comments could be used to document preconditions
and postconditions, but, unlike comments, assertions can check dynamically whether the preconditions and postconditions are true.
In the following example, assertions are used to document the preconditions and postcondition of the Velocity routine.
Example 8-5. Visual Basic Example of Using Assertions to Document Preconditions and Postconditions
Private Function Velocity ( _
ByVal latitude As Single, _
ByVal longitude As Single, _
ByVal elevation As Single _
) As Single
' Preconditions
Debug.Assert ( -90 <= latitude And latitude <= 90 )
Debug.Assert ( 0 <= longitude And longitude < 360 )
Debug.Assert ( -500 <= elevation And elevation <= 75000 )
...
' Postconditions Debug.Assert ( 0 <= returnVelocity And returnVelocity <= 600 )
' return value
Velocity = returnVelocity
End Function
If the variables latitude , longitude , and elevation were coming from an external source, invalid values
should be checked and handled by error-handling code rather than by assertions. If the variables are coming from a trusted, internal
source, however, and the routine's design is based on the assumption that these values will be within their valid ranges, then assertions
are appropriate.
For highly robust code, assert and then handle the error anyway. For any given error condition, a routine will generally use either
an assertion or error-handling code, but not both. Some experts argue that only one kind is needed (Meyer 1997).
But real-world programs and projects tend to be too messy to rely solely on assertions. On a large, long-lasting system, different
parts might be designed by different designers over a period of 5–10 years or more. The designers will be separated in time, across
numerous versions. Their designs will focus on different technologies at different points in the system's development. The designers
will be separated geographically, especially if parts of the system are acquired from external sources. Programmers will have worked
to different coding standards at different points in the system's lifetime. On a large development team, some programmers will inevitably
be more conscientious than others and some parts of the code will be reviewed more rigorously than other parts of the code. Some
programmers will unit test their code more thoroughly than others. With test teams working across different geographic regions and
subject to business pressures that result in test coverage that varies with each release, you can't count on comprehensive, system-level
regression testing, either.
In such circumstances, both assertions and error-handling code might be used to address the same error. In the source code for
Microsoft Word, for example, conditions that should always be true are asserted, but such errors are also handled by error-handling
code in case the assertion fails. For extremely large, complex, long-lived applications like Word, assertions are valuable because
they help to flush out as many development-time errors as possible. But the application is so complex (millions of lines of code)
and has gone through so many generations of modification that it isn't realistic to assume that every conceivable error will be detected
and corrected before the software ships, and so errors must be handled in the production version of the system as well.
Here's an example of how that might work in the Velocity example:
Example 8-6. Visual Basic Example of Using Assertions to Document Preconditions and Postconditions
Private Function Velocity ( _
ByRef latitude As Single, _
ByRef longitude As Single, _
ByRef elevation As Single _
) As Single
' Preconditions
Debug.Assert ( -90 <= latitude And latitude <= 90 ) <-- 1
Debug.Assert ( 0 <= longitude And longitude < 360 ) |
Debug.Assert ( -500 <= elevation And elevation <= 75000 ) <-- 1
...
' Sanitize input data. Values should be within the ranges asserted above,
' but if a value is not within its valid range, it will be changed to the
' closest legal value
If ( latitude < -90 ) Then <-- 2
latitude = -90 |
ElseIf ( latitude > 90 ) Then |
latitude = 90 |
End If |
If ( longitude < 0 ) Then |
longitude = 0 |
ElseIf ( longitude > 360 ) Then <-- 2
...
(1) Here is assertion code.
(2) Here is the code that handles bad input data at run time.
"... Defensive programming means always checking whether an operation succeeded. ..."
"... Exceptional usually means out of the ordinary and unusually good, but when it comes to errors, the word has a more negative meaning. The system throws an exception when some error condition happens, and if you don't catch that exception, it will give you a dialog box that says something like "your program has caused an error -- –goodbye." ..."
There are five desirable properties of good programs : They should be robust, correct,
maintainable, friendly, and efficient. Obviously, these properties can be prioritized in
different orders, but generally, efficiency is less important than correctness; it is nearly
always possible to optimize a well-designed program , whereas badly written "lean and mean"
code is often a disaster. (Donald Knuth, the algorithms guru, says that "premature optimization
is the root of all evil.")
Here I am mostly talking about programs that have to be used by non-expert users. (You can
forgive programs you write for your own purposes when they behave badly: For example, many
scientific number-crunching programs are like bad-tempered sports cars.) Being unbreakable is
important for programs to be acceptable to users, and you, therefore, need to be a little
paranoid and not assume that everything is going to work according to plan. ' Defensive
programming ' means writing programs that cope with all common errors. It means things like not
assuming that a file exists, or not assuming that you can write to any file (think of a
CD-ROM), or always checking for divide by zero.
In the next few sections I want to show you how to 'bullet-proof' programs . First, there is
a silly example to illustrate the traditional approach (check everything), and then I will
introduce exception handling.
Bullet-Proofing Programs
Say you have to teach a computer to wash its hair. The problem, of course, is that computers
have no common sense about these matters: "Lather, rinse, repeat" would certainly lead to a
house flooded with bubbles. So you divide the operation into simpler tasks, which return true
or false, and check the result of each task before going on to the next one. For example, you
can't begin to wash your hair if you can't get the top off the shampoo bottle.
Defensive programming means always checking whether an operation succeeded. So the following
code is full of if-else statements, and if you were trying to do something more
complicated than wash hair, the code would rapidly become very ugly indeed (and the code would
soon scroll off the page):
void wash_hair()
{
string msg = "";
if (! find_shampoo() || ! open_shampoo()) msg = "no shampoo";
else {
if (! wet_hair()) msg = "no water!";
else {
if (! apply_shampoo()) msg = "shampoo application error";
else {
for(int i = 0; i < 2; i++) // repeat twice
if (! lather() || ! rinse()) {
msg = "no hands!";
break; // break out of the loop
}
if (! dry_hair()) msg = "no towel!";
}
}
}
if (msg != "") cerr << "Hair error: " << msg << endl;
// clean up after washing hair
put_away_towel();
put_away_shampoo();
}
Part of the hair-washing process is to clean up afterward (as anybody who has a roommate
soon learns). This would be a problem for the following code, now assuming that
wash_hair() returns a string:
string wash_hair()
{
...
if (! wet_hair()) return "no water!"
if (! Apply_shampoo()) return "application error!";
...
}
You would need another function to call this wash_hair() , write out the message
(if the operation failed), and do the cleanup. This would still be an improvement over the
first wash_hair() because the code doesn't have all those nested blocks.
NOTE
Some people disapprove of returning from a function from more than one place, but this is
left over from the days when cleanup had to be done manually. C++ guarantees that any object is
properly cleaned up, no matter from where you return (for instance, any open file objects are
automatically closed). Besides, C++ exception handling works much like a return ,
except that it can occur from many functions deep. The following section describes this and
explains why it makes error checking easier. Catching Exceptions
An alternative to constantly checking for errors is to let the problem (for example,
division by zero, access violation) occur and then use the C++ exception-handling mechanism to
gracefully recover from the problem.
Exceptional usually means out of the ordinary and
unusually good, but when it comes to errors, the word has a more negative meaning. The system
throws an exception when some error condition happens, and if you don't catch that exception,
it will give you a dialog box that says something like "your program has caused an error --
–goodbye."
You should avoid doing that to your users -- at the very least you should give
them a more reassuring and polite message.
If an exception occurs in a try block, the system tries to match the exception with
one (or more) catch blocks.
try { // your code goes inside this block
... problem happens - system throws exception
}
catch(Exception) { // exception caught here
... handle the problem
}
It is an error to have a try without a catch and vice versa. The ON
ERROR clause in Visual Basic achieves a similar goal, as do signals in C; they allow you
to jump out of trouble to a place where you can deal with the problem. The example is a
function div() , which does integer division. Instead of checking whether the divisor
is zero, this code lets the division by zero happen but catches the exception. Any code within
the try block can safely do integer division, without having to worry about the
problem. I've also defined a function bad_div() that does not catch the exception,
which will give a system error message when called:
int div(int i, int j)
{
int k = 0;
try {
k = i/j;
cout << "successful value " << k << endl;
}
catch(IntDivideByZero) {
cout << "divide by zero\n";
}
return k;
}
;> int bad_div(int i,int j) { return i/j; }
;> bad_div(10,0);
integer division by zero <main> (2)
;> div(2,1);
successful value 1
(int) 1
;> div(1,0);
divide by zero
(int) 0
This example is not how you would normally organize things. A lowly function like
div() should not have to decide how an error should be handled; its job is to do a
straightforward calculation. Generally, it is not a good idea to directly output error
information to cout or cerr because Windows graphical user interface programs
typically don't do that kind of output. Fortunately, any function call, made from within a
try block, that throws an exception will have that exception caught by the
catch block. The following is a little program that calls the (trivial) div()
function repeatedly but catches any divide-by-zero errors:
// div.cpp
#include <iostream>
#include <uc_except.h>
using namespace std;
int div(int i, int j)
{ return i/j; }
int main() {
int i,j,k;
cout << "Enter 0 0 to exit\n";
for(;;) { // loop forever
try {
cout << "Give two numbers: ";
cin >> i >> j;
if (i == 0 && j == 0) return 0; // exit program!
int k = div(i,j);
cout << "i/j = " << k << endl;
} catch(IntDivideByZero) {
cout << "divide by zero\n";
}
}
return 0;
}
Notice two crucial things about this example: First, the error-handling code appears as a
separate exceptional case, and second, the program does not crash due to divide-by-zero errors
(instead, it politely tells the user about the problem and keeps going).
Note the inclusion of <uc_except.h> , which is a nonstandard extension
specific to UnderC. The ISO standard does not specify any hardware error exceptions, mostly
because not all platforms support them, and a standard has to work everywhere. So
IntDivideByZero is not available on all systems. (I have included some library code
that implements these hardware exceptions for GCC and BCC32; please see the Appendix for more
details.)
How do you catch more than one kind of error? There may be more than one catch
block after the try block, and the runtime system looks for the best match. In some
ways, a catch block is like a function definition; you supply an argument, and you can
name a parameter that should be passed as a reference. For example, in the following code,
whatever do_something() does, catch_all_errors() catches it -- specifically a
divide-by-zero error -- and it catches any other exceptions as well:
The standard exceptions have a what() method, which gives more information about
them. Order is important here. Exception includes HardwareException , so
putting Exception first would catch just about everything. When an exception is
thrown, the system picks the first catch block that would match that exception. The
rule is to put the catch blocks in order of increasing generality.
Throwing
Exceptions
You can throw your own exceptions, which can be of any type, including C++ strings. (In
Chapter 8 ,
"Inheritance and Virtual Methods," you will see how you can create a hierarchy of errors, but
for now, strings and integers will do fine.) It is a good idea to write an error-generating
function fail() , which allows you to add extra error-tracking features later. The
following example returns to the hair-washing algorithm and is even more paranoid about
possible problems:
void fail(string msg)
{
throw msg;
}
void wash_hair()
{
try {
if (! find_shampoo()) fail("no shampoo");
if (! open_shampoo()) fail("can't open shampoo");
if (! wet_hair()) fail("no water!");
if (! apply_shampoo())fail("shampoo application error");
for(int i = 0; i < 2; i++) // repeat twice
if (! lather() || ! rinse()) fail("no hands!");
if (! dry_hair()) fail("no towel!");
}
catch(string err) {
cerr << "Known Hair washing failure: " << err << endl;
}
catch(...) {
cerr << "Catastropic failure\n";
}
// clean up after washing hair
put_away_towel();
put_away_shampoo();
}
In this example, the general logic is clear, and the cleanup code is always run, whatever
disaster happens. This example includes a catch-all catch block at the end. It is a
good idea to put one of these in your program's main() function so that it can deliver
a more polite message than "illegal instruction." But because you will then have no information
about what caused the problem, it's a good idea to cover a number of known cases first. Such a
catch-all must be the last catch block; otherwise, it will mask more specific
errors.
It is also possible to use a trick that Perl programmers use: If the fail()
function returns a bool , then the following expression is valid C++ and does exactly
what you want:
If dry_hair() returns true, the or expression must be true, and there's no
need to evaluate the second term. Conversely, if dry_hair() returns false, the
fail() function would be evaluated and the side effect would be to throw an exception.
This short-circuiting of Boolean expressions applies also to && and is
guaranteed by the C++ standard.
Once you've adopted this mind-set, you can then rewrite your prototype and follow a set of
eight strategies to make your code as solid as possible.
While I work on the real version, I
ruthlessly follow these strategies and try to remove as many errors as I can, thinking like
someone who wants to break the software.
Never Trust Input. Never trust the data you're given and always validate it.
Prevent Errors. If an error is possible, no matter how probable, try to prevent it.
Fail Early and Openly Fail early, cleanly, and openly, stating what happened, where, and how
to fix it.
Document Assumptions Clearly state the pre-conditions, post-conditions, and invariants.
Prevention over Documentation. Don't do with documentation that which can be done with code
or avoided completely.
Automate Everything Automate everything, especially testing.
Simplify and Clarify Always simplify the code to the smallest, cleanest form that works
without sacrificing safety.
Question Authority Don't blindly follow or reject rules.
These aren't the only strategies, but they're the core things I feel programmers have to
focus on when trying to make good, solid code. Notice that I don't really say exactly how to do
these. I'll go into each of these in more detail, and some of the exercises will actually cover
them extensively.
"... Different responsibilities should go into different components, layers, or modules of the application. Each part of the program should only be responsible for a part of the functionality (what we call its concerns) and should know nothing about the rest. ..."
"... The goal of separating concerns in software is to enhance maintainability by minimizing ripple effects. A ripple effect means the propagation of a change in the software from a starting point. This could be the case of an error or exception triggering a chain of other exceptions, causing failures that will result in a defect on a remote part of the application. It can also be that we have to change a lot of code scattered through multiple parts of the code base, as a result of a simple change in a function definition. ..."
"... Rule of thumb: Well-defined software will achieve high cohesion and low coupling. ..."
This is a design principle that is applied at multiple levels. It is not just about the
low-level design (code), but it is also relevant at a higher level of abstraction, so it will
come up later when we talk about architecture.
Different responsibilities should go into different components, layers, or modules of the
application. Each part of the program should only be responsible for a part of the
functionality (what we call its concerns) and should know nothing about the rest.
The goal of separating concerns in software is to enhance maintainability by minimizing
ripple effects. A ripple effect means the propagation of a change in the software from a
starting point. This could be the case of an error or exception triggering a chain of other
exceptions, causing failures that will result in a defect on a remote part of the application.
It can also be that we have to change a lot of code scattered through multiple parts of the
code base, as a result of a simple change in a function definition.
Clearly, we do not want these scenarios to happen. The software has to be easy to change. If
we have to modify or refactor some part of the code that has to have a minimal impact on the
rest of the application, the way to achieve this is through proper encapsulation.
In a similar way, we want any potential errors to be contained so that they don't cause
major damage.
This concept is related to the DbC principle in the sense that each concern can be enforced
by a contract. When a contract is violated, and an exception is raised as a result of such a
violation, we know what part of the program has the failure, and what responsibilities failed
to be met.
Despite this similarity, separation of concerns goes further. We normally think of contracts
between functions, methods, or classes, and while this also applies to responsibilities that
have to be separated, the idea of separation of concerns also applies to Python modules,
packages, and basically any software component. Cohesion and coupling
These are important concepts for good software design.
On the one hand, cohesion means that objects should have a small and well-defined purpose,
and they should do as little as possible. It follows a similar philosophy as Unix commands that
do only one thing and do it well. The more cohesive our objects are, the more useful and
reusable they become, making our design better.
On the other hand, coupling refers to the idea of how two or more objects depend on each
other. This dependency poses a limitation. If two parts of the code (objects or methods) are
too dependent on each other, they bring with them some undesired consequences:
No code reuse : If one function depends too much on a particular object, or takes too
many parameters, it's coupled with this object, which means that it will be really difficult
to use that function in a different context (in order to do so, we will have to find a
suitable parameter that complies with a very restrictive interface)
Ripple effects : Changes in one of the two parts will certainly impact the other, as they
are too close
Low level of abstraction : When two functions are so closely related, it is hard to see
them as different concerns resolving problems at different levels of abstraction
Rule of thumb: Well-defined software will achieve high cohesion and low coupling.
"... Check all values in function/method parameter lists. ..."
"... Are they all the correct type and size? ..."
"... You should always initialize variables and not depend on the system to do the initialization for you. ..."
"... taking the time to make your code readable and have the code layout match the logical structure of your design is essential to writing code that is understandable by humans and that works. Adhering to coding standards and conventions, keeping to a consistent style, and including good, accurate comments will help you immensely during debugging and testing. And it will help you six months from now when you come back and try to figure out what the heck you were thinking here. ..."
By defensive programming we mean that your code should protect itself from bad data. The bad
data can come from user input via the command line, a graphical text box or form, or a file.
Bad data can also come from other routines in your program via input parameters like in the
first example above.
How do you protect your program from bad data? Validate! As tedious as it sounds, you should
always check the validity of data that you receive from outside your routine. This means you
should check the following
Check the number and type of command line arguments.
Check file operations.
Did the file open?
Did the read operation return anything?
Did the write operation write anything?
Did we reach EOF yet?
Check all values in function/method parameter lists.
Are they all the correct type and size?
You should always initialize variables and not depend on the system to do the
initialization for you.
What else should you check for? Well, here's a short list:
Null pointers (references in Java)
Zeros in denominators
Wrong type
Out of range values
As an example, here's a C program that takes in a list of house prices from a file and
computes the average house price from the list. The file is provided to the program from the
command line.
/* * program to compute the average selling price of a set of homes. * Input comes from a file that is passed via the command line.
* Output is the Total and Average sale prices for * all the homes and the number of prices in the file. * * jfdooley */ #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv) { FILE *fp; double totalPrice, avgPrice; double price; int numPrices;
/* check that the user entered the correct number of args */ if (argc < 2) { fprintf(stderr,"Usage: %s <filename>\n", argv[0]); exit(1); }
/* try to open the input file */ fp = fopen(argv[1], "r"); if (fp == NULL) { fprintf(stderr, "File Not Found: %s\n", argv[1])
In reality, standing alone with election fraud notwithstanding , last October's lockstep decision by an entire news industry to suppress the starkly headline-worthy scandals around Hunter Biden's laptop, along with all other negative stories about Joe Biden, accounts directly for 17% of Biden voters who would have abandoned him " had they known the facts about one or more of these news stories." Because those lost votes "would have changed the outcome in all six of the swing states won by Joe Biden," re-electing Trump, burying those stories was first-degree election interference.
Eric Hoffer in 1967, in the Oval Office , visiting President Lyndon Baines Johnson
(1951), is a work in social psychology which discusses the psychological causes of fanaticism. It is widely considered a classic.
) As Hoffer puts it near the end of his work: "All mass movements irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred, and intolerance." (p. 141)
