Book Excerpts
Thirty Bills Unpaid
Posts: 16,881
Thought I'd create a thread where we could share exerpts or ideas from books that we might be reading or have read. Purpose? Stimulate curiousity for the book or to generate discussion relevant to the material presented.
Here's a little tidbit from The Shock Doctrine:
All public officials are required to divest themselves of any holdings that stand to lose or gain from decisions they might make in office.
Donald Rumsfeld's defiance for adhering to these standard conflict rules saw his Gilead stocks go from a mere $7.45 each in 2001 to $67.60 each when he left office- an 807% increase.
Dick Cheney became defiant as well. He held on to 189,000 Haliburton shares that, as a result of invading Iraq, saw stock prices jump from $10 before the war to $41 three years later (a 300% jump). These profits were largely due to skyrocketing oil prices and and billions in no-bid military contracts.
Klein says: During the Second World War, president Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke out strongly agains war profiteers, saying, "I don't want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster."
Later adding: In the Bush administration, the war profiteers aren't just clamoring to get access to government, they are the government.
Here's a little tidbit from The Shock Doctrine:
All public officials are required to divest themselves of any holdings that stand to lose or gain from decisions they might make in office.
Donald Rumsfeld's defiance for adhering to these standard conflict rules saw his Gilead stocks go from a mere $7.45 each in 2001 to $67.60 each when he left office- an 807% increase.
Dick Cheney became defiant as well. He held on to 189,000 Haliburton shares that, as a result of invading Iraq, saw stock prices jump from $10 before the war to $41 three years later (a 300% jump). These profits were largely due to skyrocketing oil prices and and billions in no-bid military contracts.
Klein says: During the Second World War, president Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke out strongly agains war profiteers, saying, "I don't want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster."
Later adding: In the Bush administration, the war profiteers aren't just clamoring to get access to government, they are the government.
"My brain's a good brain!"
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Then I went to meet Rita Bettencourt and took her back to the apartment. I got her in my bedroom after a long talk in the dark of the front room. She was a nice little girl, simple and true, and tremendously frightened of sex. I told her it was beautiful. I wanted to prove this to her. She let me prove it, but I was too impatient and proved nothing. She sighed in the dark. 'What do you want out of life?' I asked, and I used to ask that all the time of girls. 'I don't know,' she said. 'Just wait on tables and try to get along.' She yawned. I put my hand over her mouth and told her not to yawn. I tried to tell her how excited I was about life and the things we could do together; saying that, and planning to leave Denver in two days. She turned away wearily. We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad. We made vague plans to meet in Frisco.
...
I wanted to go and get Rita again and tell her a lot more things, and really make love to her this time, and calm her fears about men. Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk - real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious. I heard the Denver and Rio Grande locomotive howling off to the mountains. I wanted to pursue my star further.
“We must assume every event has significance and contains a message that pertains to our questions...this especially applies to what we used to call bad things...the challenge is to find the silver lining in every event, no matter how negative.”
― James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy
John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
Not very political or a current event but it's my favorite opening line of a book.
This is a wise piece.
I'm wondering how we come to dislike someone though? Sometimes I catch myself being very distrustful and not very open. When I am like this, it seems many people are on the 'dislike list' before the 'like list'. The source of my distrust has obviously originated from my previous experiences- but I cannot pinpoint exactly where in my life that I began to assume the worst of people before assuming the best of people.
So when Wedfield says: when we dislike someone, or feel threatened by someone, the natural tendency is to focus on something we dislike about the person, something that irritates us.
Does our 'dislike' originate from the thing that irritates us? In other words, do we tend to seek out flaws in people and then once we discover them... fixate on them to the point where we settle on disliking someone?
My best friend and I are like water and oil. There is so much I can't stand about him that it keeps me coming back for more.
I find that if you get fucked over, by somebody or an organization that you can take that to heart and put up a guard. To defend yourself before it happens again.
The poison from the poison stream caught up to you ELEVEN years ago and you floated out of here. Sept. 14, 08
It seems so. The more your mind swells on an idea, say, something small, like being irritated by someone. The more you focus on that irritation, it builds to a dislike or a distrust, and the more you let your mind be a certain way about a person, or even idea, the more you're going to see that in other places and people too. But if you can stop it (we all can, if we try), and try to be open, then we don't settle on, and then get stuck, on negativity. It just takes work.
Have you ever felt like someone doesn't like you? And you can't exactly explain why, that's it's just a feeling you get? It's that negative energy coming from them onto you. It's like poison if you think about it. You can control the energy coming from you, but people don't even realize it's happening. It's just their cynical selves at work.
Depending on the investment one places into something (job, relationship, project, etc.), when one is 'fucked over'... it is inevitable they begin to grow guarded- protecting themselves from future disappointment.
One can't completey shut themselves off from future endeavours, so they begin to navigate their way with a level of caution- ruining the richness of the experience in some instances.
It's a classic risk/reward situation: the greater the risk (the more you pour of yourself into something)... the greater reward (the more you draw satisfaction from something). Those that have been subjected to painful outcomes too many times begin to reserve their efforts. Despite saving themselves from the possibility of more pain... life becomes dull.
Of course.
When I was younger, if I would sense something like this, I would work a little to have the person change their perspective of me. These efforts spawned from insecurities about myself more than from a challenge. As I have gotten older, when I sense a level of indifference towards me... I do wonder why... but- whether right or wrong- I don't often care much beyond that.
While I agree that the seeking-out side of it plays a part - I've done it / felt it myself - what about simply being averse to someone when you're figuratively slapped in the face with certain qualities or actions on their part? I mean, some people are just (*edit - or act like) assholes; maybe they sap their own energy.
As often as I genuinely try to understand others, even just give them the benefit of the doubt, there've been equal times I've felt I'd rather be done with them and move on to something / someone more positive, vs. trying to figure out their side of it.
(I've got enough of my own shit to still figure out
I'm due for some new reads, as well as revisiting some old beloveds. Got a lot out of the Celestine Prophecy, by the way. Due to lack of proper lighting and a good "reading spot", it's been awhile since I've taken that kind of trip. I miss it.
I did, however, think about some of my favorite books, and Bradbury's The Illustrated Man has always been up there for me. So thankful that my sister passed on to me her paperback more than 30 (!) years ago. He always had an unusual, intuitive sense about people - about what we (think we) want, what we (think we) need.
Progress laced with ramifications, maybe.
"The lions were coming. And again George Hadley was filled with admiration for the mechanical genius who had conceived this room. A miracle of efficiency selling for an absurdly low price. Every home should have one. Oh, occasionally they frightened you with their clinical accuracy, they startled you, gave you a twinge, but most of the time what fun for everyone, not only your own son and daughter, but for yourself when you felt like a quick jaunt to a foreign land, a quick change of scenery. Well, here it was!
And here were the lions now, fifteen feet away, so real, so feverishly and startlingly real that you could feel the prickling fur on your hand, and your mouth was stuffed with the dusty upholstery smell of their heated
pelts, and the yellow of them was in your eyes like the yellow of an exquisite French tapestry, the yellows of lions and summer grass, and the sound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide, and the smell of meat from the panting, dripping mouths."
Yeah, me too. But recently, when I sense this happening, I can see that these people aren't happy with themselves. And that it's not about me, the negativity is about them. Rather than wonder why they may feel threatened or negative towards me, I just feel kinda sorry for them. And then I move on.
To Mrs. Strowers, this was a fortune, and all she had to do was sign a few documents. Holmes assured her it was all perfectly legal.
She was healthy and expected to live a good long while. She was on the verge of accepting the offer when Holmes said to her, softly, "Don't be afraid of me."
Which terrified her.
Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City
... one unintended by-product of an educational system that almost exclusively rewards coming up with the right answer is children who, understandably, learn to fear giving the wrong one. Students who care about marks rush to find the answer and get the gold star, and the more gold stars they get, the more likely they are to rely on this winning formula and the more afraid they may become of making mistakes.
In many ways, we kill curiosity. We program people to accept what has been presented without asking why. Lang further detailed the incessant string of why questions toddlers asked of adults that inevitably resulted in "because I told you so" or "because that's the way it is" responses.
I offer this piece because it seems we frequently talk about 'sheep' and the willingness of people to accept without questioning. There are conditions in place that promote reluctance to think critically.
Excellent, Thirty! Well said, both you and Lang.
Romeo Dallaire, Shake Hands With The Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda
Same book.
meaning what, as in, worth? like a class issue, or more humanE?
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
Dallaire offered it under the context of the western society's indifference towards the plight of the Tutsi people as they were being slaughtered by the Hutu people in the Rwandan genocide. He speculated that that the west might have felt a little more compelled to move to action if the situation wasn't in Africa.
fuck the west. our governments only give a fuck about two things:
1) money
2) positive exposure
Fargo 2003
Winnipeg 2005
Winnipeg 2011
St. Paul 2014
I'll never forget Bill Clinton arriving in Rwanda to express his apologies for failing the Tutsi people. He walked off the plane and up to the podium at the airport to deliver his speech. Air Force One kept the motors humming and once he finished his speech... he hopped right back on the plane and flew home.
800,000 to a million Tutsi people had their heads chopped off in one month and this was the best they got.
Is this what you mean by positive exposure?
... the storm did such an effective job of clearing the beach, a process of displacement and gentrification that would normally unfold over years took place in a matter of days or weeks. What it looked like was hundreds of thousands of poor, brown-skinned people (the fishing people deemed "unproductive" by the World Bank) being moved against their wishes to make room for ultra-rich, mostly light skinned people (the "high-yield" tourists).
Backed up by the guns of local police and private security, it was militarized gentrification, class war on the beach.
Note: the aid stations were set up in the interior which drew the coastal people into the interior to receive help. These temporary shelters began to grow into shantytowns, while the coasts saw a proliferation of high end hotels that feature rooms at $800 per night.
The only direct money that the US government was spending on small-scale fishing people was a $1 million grant to "upgrade" the temporary shelters where they were being warehoused while the beaches were redeveloped.
Reserve Police Battalion 101 received orders for a "special action" in Poland. The nature of this "special action" was not specified in the written orders, but the men were led to believe that they would be performing guard duty.
...
Major Trapp assembled the men in a half-circle and addressed them. After explaining the battalion's murderous assignment, he made his extraordinary offer: any of the older men who did not feel up to the task that lay before them could step out. Trapp paused, and after some moments one man from Third Company, Otto-Julius Schimke stepped forward.
A brave, brave man who's courage I could only hope to exhibit under the same duress.
Ordinary Men, Christopher Browning
Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold, Tim Hetherington
Chadwick posted a link to a video clip on Liberia earlier in the year. I became interested in Liberia and have read what I could find relevant to the country and its recent civil wars. The typical root factors contributed to much pain and suffering: greed, corruption, and healthy dose of sheer madness.
I started to move, but Mikey, like the brilliant officer he was, had appreciated the situation and already called it. "Fall back!"
Fall back! More like fall off- the freakin' mountain, that is; a nearly sheer drop, right behind us, God knows how far down. But an order's an order. I grabbed my gear and took a sideways step, trying to zigzag down the gradient. But gravity made the decision for me, and I fell headlong down the mountain, completing a full forward flip and somehow landing on my back, still going fast, heels flailing for a foothold.
Lone Survivor, Marcus Luttrell
Sheer madness.
This was an awesome book! Highly, highly recommended.
I remember one Superbowl a few years back, they were honouring the troops and one of the announcers said 'Marcus Luttrell is in the house and if there ever was a military hero... he's one.'
Many of the seals were angry that Luttrell wrote the book and agreed to a movie deal. The seal operations and tactics are supposed to stay in house. Many traditionalists hated the fact that Luttrell was offering insight into the seal world.
The movie is coming out on January 10 and I'm waiting for it as much as I am the Vancouver Bootleg. So are two of my buddies who read the book as well.
Dodd listened intently as Hitler portrayed Germany as a well-meaning, peace-seeking nation whose modest desire for equality of armaments was being opposed by other nations...
It was a stunning development...
Though Dodd continued to nurture the hop that the German government would grow more civil, he rocognized that Hitler's decision signalled an ominous shift away from moderation. The time had come, he knew, to meet with Hitler face-to-face. Dodd went to bed that night deeply troubled.
Shortly before noon on Tuesday, October 17, 1993, Roosevelt's "standing liberal" set out in a top hat and tails for his first meeting with Adolph Hitler.
In The Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson
(just got to this point in the book and it made me sit up as I was reading... decided to share it)
Have read passages from the book but not yet in full...want to see the film as well.
(also love that he named his son Axe!)
The following link details some idiots that shot his dog for kicks. They had no idea who they were messing with and what was to ensue:
What a life this man has lived.
Not sure how I missed this thread!
Loved Devil in the White City, how is this? On my to read list, eventually.
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned...
I AM MINE
Devil was a good book, eh?