Periodic Interest - A Blog Book For 2018

by Thomas H.
Spitters
Periodic Interest.
To My Mother
1
2
Contents
First blog post 6
Brzezinzki, Zbigniew (b. 1928, Warsaw — d. 2017, Falls Ch... 6
QB VII (Leon Uris, 1970) – “Queens Bench Courtroom Number 7
Seven”.
Saturday, June 03, 2017 8
A Book by Craig Shirley — Reagan Rising (2017.) 11
Post WWII “Dogs of War” — a Kind of &... 11
“How to”, … But Reason about It. 14
“How to”, … But Reason about It. 16
The Party Changed and Why (P.R.C. – 1989) 16
Here, Everyone is Busy, So Just “Take Off” When... 18
Michael (non!), Daniel Barenboim’s Bach Recording &#8... 20
Remember, Critically, the Pacific War in 1945 — the Victo... 22
WHY POLITICIZING HEALTH CARE IS STRANGE : AN 24
INCORRECT POLICY.
“Hegemony” or Protecting the Home Country? The... 26
INSTEAD OF TAKING A NUMBER, CHOOSE ONE. 28
Yao, by Yao Ming / Ric Bucher (Hyperion Books, 2005). Late 29
Review.
Tet Mau Than — HUE 1968, by Mark Bowden (and the sign of 30
...
DEEP THINKING (2017), BY Garry Kasparov. 32
Power Is to Become Cheap and Clean, … . 34
A Work Un – finished : al – Qaeda and the World. 36
A Work Un – finished : al – Qaeda and the World. 37
By Gloria Davies, a Book on Routine Hostility and Literature. 37
3
By Gloria Davies, a Book on Routine Hostility and Literature. 39
More Than a Single Holocaust. 39
Peace of the Prophets — of Love and Necessity, and the Wo... 41
Modern Media Computing : Music and the Like to Eyes and 43
Ears (Empi...
Modern Media Computing : Music and the Like to Eyes and 45
Ears (Empir...
Innovation, Creativity, AI, … . 45
Innovation, Creativity, AI, … . 47
Symmetry in Nature — Soviet Nuclear Weapons and the 20th ... 47
The Israel of Moshe Dayan. 49
JOHN ROBERT FOWLES (d. 2005) : Humanism as 50
“Childism&amp...
Critique and Preservation of Nature, of All. 52
ANOTHER REASON FOR THE NOVEL “NIGHT”. 52
“Zazie dans le métro …” 54
If One Got in His Way … Ronald Reagan, the USSR, Nuclear... 55
Khruschev, by William Taubman (2003) 57
We Must (Have) … . 59
The Bible, No Matter Your Approach to It, Is a Truth — As... 60
Talks Fighting Merchant of the Unnameable. 62
Trump and the Tariffs (While “Tariffs” Is Reall... 64
“Kingdom of God” … “Genoci... 66
After a Speech at College. 68
The Yeltsin Reforms in Spirit Today, and “Bandits&#82... 70
The “Dismal” Science of Economics — I... 72
Given German Reunification, Maastricht, Decades of Change; 74
but With...
4
Pas Pour les Amateurs en Cherchant le Pouvoir. 76
As Your Wheels Touch the Pavement … . 78
“The Medicine of Movement” … . 80
Latest in U.S. Politics (2016 “[Polytheistic] Book of Num... 82
Brief Analysis of the Yuan Policy Right Now. Okay? 84
Correctness, Ideology, Politics, Human Drama — Communism 86
...
Neither Dove Nor Hawk — Cold War “Owl” 87
5
First blog post
Sunday, May 28, 2017
This is my very first post on WordPress. If you like, use this post to tell readers why you
chose and read this blog and what you plan to do with the post.
Thank you for visiting my blog location. Great! Sincerely, Tom (Thomas H. Spitters)
Resources for / from outer space (for free!) — click here.
Brzezinzki, Zbigniew (b. 1928, Warsaw — d.

2017, Falls Ch...
Sunday, May 28, 2017
Maybe the way I began knowing this great public figure (shown in the image here on the
right) was through television broadcasts only starting during the 1970’s late in the war
and then in the Carter administration. The guy was obviously brilliant and the overriding
personality trait that showed in his television appearances was that he knew his foreign
policy thinking was correct, he just couldn’t get anyone to stand with him on it besides
maybe the president. Regardless of the Harvard nor Columbia credentials, and for a
professorship at Harvard he was apparently passed over and migrated to Columbia in
New York, a place greatly more interesting for the sort of applied policies and politics he
would engage in for the remainder of his life. Keep in mind that H.A.K., Brzezinski’s
nemesis at Harvard, had his own, unnamed analogs at the time, and was passed over
teaching – wise more than once; an indication of the severity of the place, even for these
6 Periodic Interest.
geniuses.
Second, and as a student I could not preach the Harvard gospel as it was espoused by
people like Cyrus Vance, another brilliant chap, the soviets in the late 1970’s would be
around for years and years, a long time to come, really. I might be mistaken in this
though I considered the Carter people appeasers as they had these very bright people
giving orders and managing, there was just no one who would follow them. Brzezinski on
the other hand saved the foreign policy of the Carter presidency at one point by declaring
the Cold War would end in the favor of the U.S. If you speak with anyone at the time who
was concerned by this sort of thing, this sort of statement, though not endorsed by Carter,
really, at the time was like a big plate of fried bananas (my favorite dessert.) Brzezinski
had to wait to document this idea and publish it in The Grand Chessboard (Basic Books,
1997) that I have read at least twice. Even in his later years, to hear him speak in
interviews was telling, one could not question but that he was and continued as a force.
This helped many people to hear him talk, gave them hope and might have saved lives.
The man is dearly missed by everybody. He really had a thought.
“New York Times” obituary notice – Z. Brzezinski.
QB VII (Leon Uris, 1970) – “Queens Bench

Courtroom Number Seven”.
Tuesday, May 30, 2017
Leon Uris was sued by a chap (libel suit in U.K., Dering v. Uris) over a first novel about
the WWII Holocaust entitled Exodus. Without having the text in front of me, Exodus was
about the continued conflicted and multi – level themes that are in the consciousness of
modern Israel, especially concerning the Cold War, the fight against communism and
military efforts against the soviet Red Army – sponsored Arab fighting forces during the
famous Six Day War (June 5 th through 10 th, 1967). If that is not enough for you, QBVII
examines the world of WWII Concentration Camp Jadwiga, an Eastern Europe nazi camp
where human experiments were carried out, during the time of the war (1939 – 1945).
The Queens courtroom is that of Judge Thomas Bannister and plaintiff is Sir Adam Kelno,
a nazi butcher under the supervision of a colonel Adolph Voss, who experimented
deliberately and innovatively with nazi human sterilization methods, all surgical in nature.
Periodic Interest. 7
The defendants are Abraham Cady and David Shawcross, authors and publishers.
The lawsuit is a libel suit in which a book has been published by Cady and Shawcross,
The Holocaust, that mentions the Jadwiga concentration camp and the forced and
experimental sterilization methods the doctors used there against their Jewish prisoner –
victims. The evidence of the book all points to the work of Adam Kelno as supervised and
managed by Voss. When the court testimony is eventually heard, and a good part of the
book is in fact in very good, rich imagery, narrated as a story about assembling the case
and people, and the ups and downs of this, to appear and to testify at trial. The imagery
of the pre – trial plot is as devastating as the actual testimony as written down in the
narrative. Though this is not mentioned, the severity of the Holocaust itself, and the
barbaric methods of the Nazis against their victims, mostly and virtually all Jews,
provokes a sympathy for the soviet cause, not in and of itself, but as a bulwark against
the far right, what the far right represents and its methods and practices. This is an
important subtext that runs throughout the plot, and without details on the interests of
Stalin and the soviet regime as symbolized in the acts of the Red Army during and after
WWII, this subtext as intended carries much weight.
If one is familiar with the torture and mass – sterilization efforts of the Nazis during the
war, virtually all were used at the Jadwiga concentration camp in the novel. Horrifying.
Horrifying in reading the narratives of victims’ testimony and horrifying to know objectively
these methods were entertained on a large scale during the nazi concentration camp
times in Southwestern Poland, upper Silesia, within Germany itself and so on. What is the
point? Kelno’s proverbial hands, bloody and dirty with the detritus of his experimental
surgeries against many, many victims, most dead and unnamed, are painted in adequate
enough light by Cady, Shawcross and counsel to persuade the jury of the U.K. court to
find for the plaintiff, but to award a farthing (actually, a half – penny) only. The author
paints a very poignant scene in which Kelno, professionally and socially dead at his own
expense as the result of trial, has won his case in the domain of really apocryphal facts
by the plaintiff and due probably only to evidence presented of an occasional, actual act
of humanity in the camp he operated. As well diabolical is Kelno in the acceptance of a
half – penny financial award in the successful but self – destructive and otherwise
extremely expensive prosecution of his case; and yes, a great irony the author illustrates,
much as is the rejection of the Jews of the soviet communism that was most of their
saving grace in the war. This is a great book, and takes some of its themes of war and
peace from the classics of old, as well as Mr. Uris’ outstanding illustrations of the
psychological effects of torture and the action outside court in preparation, and within the
workings of the court, to the end, as well – all greatly suspenseful and in some ways
provoking a debunking of nazi “mysteries”. An excellent, excellent book, and one needs
also read Exodus, and The Haj by the same author in understanding such themes Uris
brings out time and again.
Saturday, June 03, 2017

REAGAN RISING : THE DECISIVE YEARS – 1976 – 1980, by Craig Shirley (2017,
Broadside Books).
This very important political text starts with the Kansas City Republican Convention in
1976 that has Gerald Ford beating out Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination. As
such, and given the tooth – and – nail convention fight among Republicans at the time for
their nominee, there is something to be said about the workings of the party as an
entirety : Gerald Ford, who first faced down Reagan as a defense – oriented Cold Warrior
at the time, and who battled Reagan on other fronts, might have by his later public
appearances, speeches and aphorisms and the like, had Democrats operating for a long
time in a sense of official entitlement and bureaucratic and elective encouragement of the
post – Watergate status – quo that had the nation reeling from the Russians in the Cold
War, enough to want to appease them under many conditions, something the Demos did
and do, and then in typical fashion the Demos again paralleled the soviets in there
erecting and building monuments to themselves. Carter, when in office was a notorious
building figure and much of the foreign establishment in some countries is or was
facilitated by the Carter presidency, most recently by this, that built institutional – type
edifices to either house people during the day or at night. The Carter presidency did a
number of things in addition to the kind of penetrating and detailed, large – scale in many
cases, institution – building that took place in the day : Assured that proper defense
deterrents were working, including the nuclear deterrent as housed in the U.S. and its
associated and allied territories, Carter severely curtailed military spending and defense
and intelligence – related spending, including the necessary eavesdropping on things that
the soviets themselves did more and more of, especially through the Dolphin facility in
Cuba that was and remained there for many years, even after the U.S. became aware of
it. There are some other glaring deficiencies in the Carter Presidency that started with the
reduced defense spending and the recipe for government held out by the Demos at the
time : More spending, and maybe uselessly so, on “Great Society” – type federal
programs that represented only a very small band – aid on poverty and social strife, but
that receiv. ed much critical acclaim and populist attention even into the general election
during 1980. Some of the tax rates under Carter, just the federal rates, were so high and
so onerous for some taxpayers that the tax regime in the U.S. at the time began to
measure up to and resemble that in Sweden where the tax rate might be up to 80 – 90 %
if the narrator recalls correctly here from studies and the like. Carter wanted to save
people and put them to work, if that was desirable for them to do. Noticeably, and under
the circumstances, there were economists at the time starting to speak of the structurally
unemployed and the way Carter instituted this at least in part : It is difficult to mention in
the same sentence how this was done or the way it was resolved in the Carter years, the
overall immorality of recognizing structural unemployment as a rule and the fact that the
president at the time promoted himself, Hamilton Jordan and Walter Mondale, among
others as radically above the ordinary fray on the subject of thinking about policy and
their ability to integrate policy details and information into federal executive orders, etc.,
and legislation. If the narrator’s findings are correct here, the modus operandi of the
Democratic administration at the Carter presidency assumed, more or less, that
Washington, D.C., with her purposeful bureaucracy and dueful Democratic do – gooders
handling things, the executive branch was free to fly about the country and internationally
on the various and sundry visits to interesting venues for photo opportunities and policy
meetings with foreign leaders in view of a possible second Carter presidential term. This
was apparently carried on as an unspoken policy and practice among the DNC
candidates who acceded to the WhiteHouse in 1993 – 1994. That these sorts of policies
came to light among the social welfare and other entitlement programs came to light
might be part of the reason, at least, president Carter only served one term as such
things in modern politics are severely divisive and even his democratic opponents might
have guessed and protested his strategies would backfire no matter what because the
parties carrying the public financial weight for those structurally unemployed, etc.,
became known.
The soviet threat, state welfare economics, reductions in defense priorities and
expenses, and the touting of Republicans against democrats in elections as a warmonger
Republican figure on the opposing side no matter who nor whom it was, in the long run
resulted in an overall deterioration of support for Carter’s policies. Inflation and other
problems, stagflation and the like, caused bureaucratic inertia to bureaucratic gridlock
during the Carter years and under these conditions Carter himself hardly was seen as re
– electable apart from his great political and popular strength in the deep South. That the
Republicans had the legacy of “wage and price controls”, and the involvement of Nelson
Rockefeller in U.S. national politics (a thing that was considered not too smart due to
Rockefeller’s access to nuclear codes and his hot – headedness about soviet matters
and communism overall), the “warmongering”, and other issues including the overriding
specter of Watergate; they also had to deal with and try to tear down the DNC structure
set up in the deep South that could really overweight first the 1976, then the 1980
elections against conservatives.
The Reagan people, on the other hand, had the populous Midwestern U.S., and had the
opportunity to play on Carter’s slow and painstaking, and painful technical and policy
gaffes. The Carter presidency employed these reasonable – thinking people, educated
and all, who could not really lace their shoes in the modern political world. The
Rockefeller political business created “bad blood” in the campaigns for the presidency in
1976 and 1980 as did some other Republican – initiated and implemented policies, but
the Carters had so many gaffes that the personality and portrayal of a really great chief
executive eluded them at the time.
For beginners, have a cause, form a committee : A “The Committee on the Present
Danger” of communism and related issues had and will have the purpose and goal,
successful overall, as an action ground unseating Democratic officials and elected
politicians. There were many of these and they have proliferated over the years and
same completely and eventually disaffected, with great luminaries at their charge either
sponsoring the committee or stopping in to talk and lecture. In this way, as the Ford
administration was replete anti – left associations and groups, it served as a current
bulwark, that is in the late 1970’s, against a DNC that was considered by the American
conservative as essentially a deadly and wasteful, spending and spendthrift – ridden
party structure then administration. The text goes into detail about the questions
provoked by this and others, though it does not dwell on political cult issues. The Carters
were “coexisting” appeasers of destructive, severe and physically and psychically
extremely damaging and dangerous soviet – sponsored communists and the very deadly
soviets themselves. These details are important in anyone’s assessment about the way
Ronald Reagan became president outside those who just regard American politics as
crazy and chaotic. The who’s who of 1970’s and 1980’s American politics is also in the
book that is a fantastic read. In fact, it illustrates the very calm and deliberate way
Reagan had to do, even inviting same to parties, with his ideological and bureaucratic
adversaries, first neutralizing and then winning them over. A great artist and virtuoso
about these internal politics and the associated mill of criticism from them, Reagan
showed himself an indomptable master of domestic policies and their questions, enough
to invite accusations he had staged a number of his policy wins (this was found to be a
specious accusation), even in the international arena of foreign relations and these very
complex and complicated issues, questions, decisions, and despite in this his detractors
and attackers from the left, a grand master as well. A very great, timely book.
A Book by Craig Shirley — Reagan Rising

(2017.)
Saturday, June 03, 2017
A great read for followers of policy, the public agenda, liberal and conservative alike.
Great!
Post WWII “Dogs of War” — a Kind of &...

Sunday, June 11, 2017
“One Day in the Nuclear Age, They Will Understand Our Rage … .
This non – technical text, cover image shown above, about nuclear science and political
science has written into it three major events : a. The 1945 bombs at Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, b. the 1986 Reykjavik Summit with Ronald Reagan (and George Shultz) and
Mikhail Gorbachev (and Edouard Shevardnadze), and c. the 2009 Prague speech by
Barack Obama. At least after having read the text in detail, myself shut in and everything,
this is the view of this reader. The 1945 bombings and then the Korean War as well as
the election of president Eisenhower in the U.S. (1952) ushered in a first era of diabolical
nuclear arms development along the high – kiloton and megaton range of explosions, and
the very un – virtuous and mean, brutal cruelty of the Cold war as we knew it maybe until
the Iceland Summit featuring the U.S. and former U.S.S.R. leaders. The Prague speech
by president Obama stands on its own as either a laughable fantasy in the ears of again
brutal cynics, or as a hope and promise for the future in which man’s mission is not, as
we know today, to destroy her / himself. That’s the book, the long and short of it. There is
one other feature to it that will occupy the reader, any reader for life, and that is the
haunting and catastrophic threat of nuclear weapons that have been allowed to
proliferate and then been on the brink of destructive disaster and catastrophe every so
often. This is all the more tragic as the potentialities of nuclear disaster do not depend
upon the public policy agenda, either of the greater good or pursuit of self – interest. The
premise of the book has the reader deciding and given an overall decent reading of the
text, where and what will happen for oneself and what to do thereby. A number of
avenues are encouraged insofar as one’s beliefs begin and end and are bound by
finitude – join an anti – weaponry initiative, pray, or succumb to the visceral fears and
dejection and distraction that result from learning of the gravity and overall value and
seriousness of what is involved in our current age of nuclear weapons, that which did not
end , incidentally, but which became even more acutely dangerous given the end of the
Cold War starting in 1989 or earlier.
Nuclear weapons in the way they were first used by the Americans against Japan have a
four – point gospel and doctrine that absolves the Americans of wrongdoing or faults in
judgement, and the U.S. did the absolute best it could given the end of WWII along with
other considerations that had to do with the advent of a massive death machine – the
atom bomb – that would fall into everyone’s hands eventually if even for sale. Thus the
“machine” was used to deter not just the Japanese from continuing to prosecute their
losing war effort, but as a prevent to the Russians and a veiled threat to anyone so –
associated with hellfire in the event anyone ever dared to develop and actually to use
such machines of their own, citizens of the Russian Federation (then U.S.S.R.) included
of course. In this set of factors and considerations one has in the Americans the ancients
in one way anointing the U.S. with superpower status, but as a “bringer of fire” to the
earth and everyone in it who is today aware of (first) Hiroshima and then Nagasaki. The
first bombs were an effective deterrent before the theft of nuclear secrets by Klaus Fuchs,
the Rosenbergs and various members of Robert Oppenheimer’s staffs in places. The
secrets migrated to the Kremlin and not all the spies were caught. The soviets exploded
their own hydrogen machine in 1949, something that was effective as a propaganda
device and that allowed the Kremlin to establish the pace of the arms race with the U.S.
early in the going. The soviets, not just the Russians themselves, actually, were ahead in
1949 with their hydrogen bomb and then later with the rockets that launched Sputnik the
scientific lead after the theft of secrets and then the lead in nuclear weapons systems
including delivery was substantial during the 1950’s before development by the U.S. of
Titan rockets and then the nuclear top of many of those rockets as developed at Los
Alamos and so forth. The U.S. took a further lead with reducing the size and thus the
payload of the nuclear devices on its ICBM’s, reducing the size and integrity of the launch
and delivery systems with various innovations and then given the allowances, however
immoral and unethical, even illegal, of multiple – warhead missiles. After the mid – 1960’s
it becomes very difficult to just draw a nuclear science and development timeline
concerning nuclear weapons due to the secrecy and confidentiality of anything of that
nature and the way the secrets are intensively guarded even today. Why? In reply to the
soviet plans to rely on ICBM’s and bombers, primarily bombing, the Americans started an
indomptable and greatly intimidating and extremely threatening, scary model of reliance
on ballistic missiles that were and are land and sea – based and with leviathan bombers
that would meet soviet bombers going the other way (see the movie “Doctor Strangelove”
with George C. Scott and Peter Sellers, et.al) over Northern territories. This tripartite,
elemental strategy, along with air defenses, did indeed scare the soviets into taking pains
to stealing more and more secrets. Notably, and since some time ago, while the soviets
had good scientists, they did not place great credence in them when the party leadership
believed the stolen U.S. designs would work better, so they stole incessantly and until
they reached the proper iterative stage of the ultimate goal of parity. It is possible that
U.S. companies and the government factored this into their own nuclear systems as
many soviet nuclear installations were guarded by dedicated but inebriated security
forces, it was discovered, even when their rocket forces went on alerts during the 1970’s
– 1990’s as the nuclear weapons the U.S.S.R. had deployed were as much a danger to
the motherland should they have been used as same were to any enemy – there was
always a chance some of the soviet rockets would not work or other self – immolating
dangers.
The Americans were quite sure at Reykjavik their missiles would work, just because; and
the soviets equally unsure and visibly and over – dependent upon the psychology of
negotiation and conflict at the time. It was a dilemma as the Americans went on alert
every once in a while, too, just not, e.g., every two weeks or whenever the soviets did.
Alerts are and were very costly for non – market economies in which there is no real
intrinsic value to assets nor cash. In the midst of this, Mr. Perry appeared a nuclear
expert who was a WWII veteran from the Army of Occupation of Japan and who’d been
to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and not just to look at the bomb site. Mr. Perry had been
technically trained and about things like aeronautics and bomb blasts, so upon his arrival
at the bombed sites, he could assess things scientifically. This was a great boon to the
Air Corps and other branches of the services. Mr. Perry, Ph.D., had also been aware of
nuclear science and engineering before joining the military and had followed a number of
other very gifted and rational academic paths through his training that helped ensure U.S.
primacy in the military and then victory in the Pacific War, and other facets of that world
conflict that would have us all effusively thanking him given his resume in 1946 – 1947.
After the war then, it was more nuclear science for Dr. Perry, if even in Idaho and then in
Philadelphia, and then for the federal government. There is a mass of other details
available in the book, and Dr. Perry is a greatly successful scientist and business person
at the same time, and with other accolades and pedigrees. Dr. Perry might be the only
person alive to speak to his version of the Cold War that dominates in people’s minds
today : With the death of Z. Brzezinski and some others, there is firstly no one really
around to mention things were otherwise, and Perry is a physicist who cannot but re –
iterate with great acumen what he lived and lives and what he knows and learned.
My expectations of this text are more than fulfilled, though the book itself did not give a
full account of the horror of the Japan bombings and the sites. The Japanese, I do
believe, given their Shinto individuality and privacy, had little to say, little scientifically
anyway to volunteer for the narrative. This especially for the Hiroshima bombing that
happened as people were outside and were headed to work and their morning activities,
school and so on. This begs the question about the humanity of the U.S. people, or lack
thereof in bombing Japan in this way : There is considerable and cogent discussion and
illustration of this theme in the book. The reader must read and make his own choices
and the choices to make among various alternatives are not clear. Truman was not
pressured into the bombings of Japan, and there are very complex, non – technical
reasons for the use of the machine when used. Same are in WWII military doctrine and
will stay there. Dr. Perry does not resolve the ethics of destruction and the modes of
destruction at hand when one speaks and examines the topic of nuclear weapons and
their use. The reader must choose alone for oneself and discuss views with others. The
subject for this current author is extremely painful as narrator here knows much of the
meaning of such weaponry might have been worked out by Thomas Aquinas, or
Zoroaster, and it is necessary to evaluate nuclear weapons as an extremely complex and
complicated and systemic entity in and of themselves. Primeval. An example of this has
frequently been the status of nuclear arms and the Korean War in which MacArthur
(General) lost his work as allied commander in Korea in his advocacy of using such
weapons. Why? The nuclear arms the General wanted to use were entirely too
destructive for the theater of war in which he wanted to use them and could not be used
among other factors governing their use. The reader comprehends the overall
responsibility one has insofar as examining Dr. Perry’s book here – a stand is necessary,
even a grossly opinionated one, on one’s views of nuclear weapons by the U.S. (mostly)
and others. The current narrator is “for” the Kennedy doctrine on nuclear weapons and
“for” again several other doctrines in the text as Perry illustrates them. Perry does not go
into great detail on some items such as the fact that Tokyo was being bombed into rubble
at the time of Hiroshima; Khrushchev was hounded from office in 1964 for among other
things his handling of the Vienna Summit with Kennedy whom he found he could not
really push around; a U.S. – soviet record of the dialogues at Reykjavik would have done
nicely as the soviet leaders were hysterical at SDI and the announcement of it at the time.
Some other things as well, probably given Perry’s study of proper content and for
dedicated readers. The book is an outstanding read, and could turn out to be a classic in
the literature of post – soviet, post Cold War political literature. Really good!
“How to”, … But Reason about It.

Thursday, June 22, 2017
This topic and its recent news coverage addressing any future possible U.S. – Russian
Federation state – level meeting that has to do with North Atlantic countries and Western
Europe. Russian officials do appear long – term to have been angry over the Bush
presidency ambitions to expand N.A.T.O. to former Warsaw Treaty countries and have
considered the politics around this to be more than an annoyance. The realm of the
Russian Federation at one fell swoop contends over its, essentially, ownership of many
E. European states for a number of reasons, maybe for the same reasons, however
muted right now, for which it now possesses the Ukraine, and at the same time neglects
actual state – building and even lip service to state – building in these areas : This is
another reason for these countries to look to N.A.T.O. and western alliances as their
governance bureaus are heavily militarized and connected by hotline to Moscow, though
this does nothing for the welfare of the commonweal in these places. People are poor
and are at least, in these areas that include Warsaw itself and others like Minsk, Tbilisi,
Baku, and others, a little tired of the blustering and systemic histrionics of their superiors
in Moscow that are paraded and flourished in all their glorified operability and utility,
defensive and offensive; plus, countries like Poland and Georgia are more and more
Western – looking. The armaments of concern here and their related military and secret
programs that Moscow procures are extremely expensive for the Near Abroad and
related states that would otherwise not need these, and as superintended by Russian
military / K.G.B. from Russian Federation proper, in the event of their adherence and
participation in N.A.T.O. This identity is simple, and is made more complicated by the
legacy of communism – Marxism and its approach to sovereignty and ethnicity, especially
yet in the Near Abroad, and not just the politics of these, but the Slavic identities involved,
reliance upon Moscow by apolitical populace and official bureaus in countries
neighboring the Russian Federation. There are other considerations that are private and
overriding as well, though given the existence of ‘economic man’ over ‘soviet man’ under
the circumstances, one might suggest here that change is difficult and that Moscow’s old
guard is showing its hand through the leadership there at this time — this is to be
reckoned with and stops peace and security initiatives in favor of a sturm und drang
status quo at present that could provoke another arms race reliant upon air forces that
are quicker to deploy and more dangerous for everyone : Time for “The Producers”.
There are elaborate statements various parties make on nuclear weapons and their
proliferation and non – proliferation, first of all, and then in predictions of what might lead
up to and then happen in a nuclear exchange. It still matters little, for instance, of what
France or Iran might contribute to such a conflict as the overriding and by far still, quite
large arsenals that control the policy and politics, military objectives and other drivers and
purposes of nuclear arms scenarios are still U.S. / former USSR. See here : There is
timeline after timeline of events in the series of disputes and agreements, since recorded
events and nuclear weapons met (presumably with the agreements for the destruction of
Japanese and German weapons after WWII), though important among them more
recently appear to be the U.S. – Russian Federation narrative agreements under the
“Umbrella Agreement”, “Bratislava Agreement”, NewStart (to renew), INF Treaty (to
renew), NPT, recent agreement for nuclear materials and weapons physical security, and
others. One might mention here that when faced with strategic reductions, both parties
appear to apply weapons implementation and proliferation issues then to tactical and
intermediate nuclear weapons implementation that maintains a balance, more or less,
that lessens psychologically terrorizing impacts of the weapons themselves in general.
An example of this is a game of horseshoes where there are two contestants, and there
is actually one throw. No matter the pinpoint accuracy of the ordinance these days, from
within a thousand yards when we were children to the precision guidance of today, the
horseshoes game model does hold and there are implications of it beyond this writing
(read William Perry’s recent text on this, and Cirincione’s not – so – recent text or texts on
the nuclear danger, and others). One can look into this issue forever to have knowledge
and findings about it – this is best left to nuclear engineers and politicians such as Mr.
Nunn and Mr. Lugar who in 1991 or so made us all more secure in a world of nuclear
terror; what of all things if one knows of the workings of these armaments and how they
are handled and their systems, etc.; that assures at least for the time being that the major
nuclear weapons – implementers have a dedication to actually reducing their numbers
and acute destructive power (in its nature awesome and awe inspiring and infinitely
destructive and evil at the same time) of the weapons in their arsenals. This overall status
quo, and though many people alive do not like the term, is a reason that countries such
as Iran and Syria should not have nuclear weapons, and there are others, equal
proliferators who need not have them either at the same time.
The beauty, the overriding power and security of the Nunn – Lugar rules as signed by
Yeltsin (Boris) and signed into law in the U.S., has to do with the illegality of
simultaneously developing, implementing and then supplanting one’s nuclear arsenal –
remember this as an old process or processes were / was simultaneous and the
production of nuclear weapons machinery in this way, people eventually reasoned, and
this including the Russians as our long – time adversary, was diabolical,
counterproductive to national policies in both U.S. and former USSR, and unaffordable by
both sides as well. It also meant that without renewing this arrangement, and the START
and INF arrangements, and to a lesser degree NPT provisions, the Nunn – Lugar policy
while greatly significant and hopeful for everyone, not just those in the military
everywhere, the arms race policies as offensive (“defensive”) were laid to rest only for a
while. If these promulgated arms reduction and abatement, dismantlement policies for
nuclear weapons as they are, agreements are not renewed despite diametric first – strike
logic on both sides, U.S. and Russian Federation, the arms race has great chances of
renewing itself and then such weapons would proliferate again inappropriately to states
wanting to purchase nuclear weapons and then develop them, rogue states already, and
then to terrorist and other private groups as soldiers of fortune against everyone. Any
resolution of this, especially given the factors of terrorism and proliferation activities,
having to do with additional and adaptive defense policies of nuclear countries and their
officials spending more time in meetings to reduce the proliferation of nuclear weapons
and abate finally or at least limit the production of these is greatly welcome by
reasonable, coherent and reasonable people everywhere. How should this happen? The
INF Treaty protocols and the “Umbrella Agreement” process under the Bush Presidency,
and re – emphasizing the provisions of Nunn – Lugar might be good models to follow,
and because these policies face additional and necessary renewal in coming years for
obvious practical reasons. The present writer with respect to all this does believe there
needs to be linkage, and not just within the issues and questions of Russian Federation
politics and policy, but in those of every nuclear country between the allowance for first
purchase and / or development of any kind of strategic or tactical, or intermediate – range
nuclear weapons by any one state, and a direct and equal policy and practical
(administrative and legal) weight placed upon limiting, and then abating nuclear
proliferation and then of the warheads and warhead sites at the same time and into the
future. Current agreements, the NewStart, INF and Umbrella and Bratislava and other
arrangements are along these lines though these examine nuclear abatement without the
linkage needed to legally and figuratively to throw off, to stop the multi – national nuclear
arms race by the entirety or at least to the level of deterrence without the terrorizing,
again, offensive capabilities of these weapons that nuclear countries appear to have right
now.
SEE THIS NON – PROLIFERATION TIMELINE.
“How to”, … But Reason about It.

Thursday, June 22, 2017
Source: “How to”, … But Reason about It.
The Party Changed and Why (P.R.C. – 1989)

Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Chai Ling, A Heart for Freedom, (2011, Tyndale House.)
The world is often not shocked by the birth of people, nor surprised as people are born
every few seconds and then facing the vicissitudes of the human race have various
responses to life’s desserts. Ms. Ling is one person born in the age of conformity and
who must have grown into young adulthood while turning over and over the merits of
societal change, institutional change and ways to achieve this, including dissension, in
her country the PRC. From a military family, and in P.R.C. this is hardly a bed of roses,
the girls’ father visited her at university just before 1989 Tian Anmen events in which she
was featured prominently with her friends Wang and Feng, and others at the premier
younger – generation dissenters against Marxists conformism and the one – child policy
prevailing in the country at the time. Besides having other, many deeper and more deep –
seated traits, Ms. Ling is a survivor of the first order, and while not directly obstructing the
military retaliation against Tian An students in 1989, and probably wiser to have not
sacrificed herself in a massacre that took place in June of that year at Tian An, Ms. Ling
shows herself by all accounts a model of dissenting and contrarianism against many
organized factors in place at the time to upset her applecart. It is obvious at the same
time the gamesmanship of P.R.C. leadership was based on military influences and did
not take into account the proper humanity of the people, and most very young people as
well, thinking, talented and all; who were occupying the square at the time the firing and
tank attacks began. The reaction of P.R.C. authorities to the student protests leading up
to and including the massacre and other military actions against the Bei jing Da Xue
students had more to do with individual paranoia of the leadership than the popular
disturbances made by the students. This also had to do with the rigidity of P.R.C. rule and
the paranoia, extreme conservatism, moralizing and so forth the superiors did at the time
– and they failed to settle with the students properly, instead choosing to shoot people
and to terrorize the rest. This measure of the narrative, in all its rich detail as Ms. Ling
tells it, highlights the absurdities of the Chinese leadership at the time.
The psychology studies that Ms. Ling was following during her university years prepared
her well for getting up and speaking before crowds, organizational skills before a large
number of people and so on. The illustration of the position she was in at the time is
greatly enviable – though who else could have done what she did to reform China in the
ways she and her colleagues, and the thousands of students at Tian An with their
chanting, singing, shouting capitalist slogans, hunger strikes, and other sacrifices that led
the country at the time not to mention those who paid with their lives when, again, the
shootings of students took place in the brutal 1980 June crackdown against them. The
Pro – Democracy Movement in China began long ago, though it has been greatly helped
by such events as Tian An men protests and events, above all the 1989 ones. China is
an increasingly urbanized and in urban centers much more concentrated than many city
places anywhere. What does this mean and what impact does it have with regard to
China and P.R.C.’ image around the world, among other things up until today : The
events of 1980 in Bei jing at university might be a feature story or footnote in new books
as it might be, though the impact of those series of events has been greatly long –
lasting. At long last, the party and its members have realized that the economics of the
uprisings that summer, in their great relief featuring the Goddess of Democracy, that
marches on Chang An, the coming and going to and from school, and more for all the
dissenters involved are not a memory for many people nor for them a thing of the past.
The images live on in the hearts of everyone, especially those of emigres to the U.S. who
brought this with them in relief from communism, oppression and dissension to freedom.
A great read!
Chai Ling Interview.
Chai Ling – Interview “South China Morning Post”.
Chai Ling – All Girls Allowed.
Here, Everyone is Busy, So Just “Take Off”

When...
Wednesday, July 05, 2017
P.R.C. and the G – 20 – July 2017

The goals of China at the G – 20 Summit this week in Hamburg, FRG, have to do more
with its concentration on power politics than anything else, what with the early arrival of
the Chinese head – of – state Xi Jin ping remarkably early to the country today (July 5,
2017.) Undoubtedly there is discussion at the meetings in Hamburg this week of Brexit
and North Korea, especially among anyone good at rhetoric. Otherwise, that the Chinese
are still in economic organizations such as that of growth nations and that of stodgy,
capitalist economic rules and identities is equally stifling after a number of even former
soviet clients, and the soviets were the Marxist tutors of the P.R.C., who have publicly
complained the Chinese again have gotten into their computing systems. Things such as
computer architecture and wireless network structure do seem a way to distract from the
trade and mercantilist approach to politics of the G – 20 lately, and same has been this
way for some time, maybe since its founding of sorts in Paris by Giscard d’Estaing many
years ago, originally as the G7. But what is at hand that has the Chinese arriving so early
to such an event? There is not really an answer, other than Xi is at least temporarily
attempting to steal the aura and locale of much of the work that is completed by a
Chinese foreign minister and the German trade and commerce, etc., bureaus and those
related activities and people along with all the various views and critical thinking, studies,
statistics, arguments based on these, and of course their main effect once the press
hears them and re – emits them, trumpeting from the metaphorical turrets at the house of
gathering people.
Economics deals much in the subject area of approximations due in part at least to the
number of factors that are entered into a hypothetical model to produce a proper and real
– looking outcome, payoff, and / or result. Remember that this is an area where those in
government or regulators are constantly shaping and re – shaping models and
hypothesis in order to stratify, develop, equalize, defer and so forth, according to the
party line or altogether official roles of individual actors and their own influences over the
market, be the actors people, entities, economic phenomenon and influences
themselves, short and long – term trends in markets including the effects of regulation
and compliance in their intent and to the letter of the law also. This all just adds to the
dismal and downright defeatist (sometimes) aura of economics by the entirety, not just
macro – economics, but corporate finance and labor economics, etc., all together at the
same time. Just like when Abby Joseph Cohen did not predict the dot – com bust, but
predicted that stocks would greatly rise when same lost considerable value, a bad call
essentially and really unforeseeable, you can study the market for years and still be
incredibly incorrect in your assessments of it – not just the stock market, but any market,
really, including the retail industry market upon which our economy has learned to
become so independently dependent.
In economics, there is theory, and there is a “cut – and – try” school, empiricism
essentially. One might note here the G – 20 these days is full of major, major, really
important officials, each in command of a certain portion of important international (all)
market power and who have varied goals. One part of the mission of the G – 20 is to
bring these varied and sometimes opposing economic policies and missions under one
roof for even a week and to have them cooperate or at least discuss making the world
economic climate more livable and less of a market power – grab than might otherwise
be. Some are completely opposed to the type of low – level re – learning this association
is doing between its members, and much of that at the expense of Western countries
whose capitalism dates several centuries to Dutch trading exchanges. The idea at the
time, of capitalism and the possibilities it promised, all nearly un – limited and with
different potentialities, is no less enthralling today and strict capitalism is as much against
bureaucratic cartels as market or commercial, economic cartels. What, within the rules of
the system then does this invite or provoke from the international actors who are having a
go at it this week in FRG? Least of all, apparently, and this is a hunch, do any speak of
“management” or “control” even of economic factors that make or break their fortunes.
Not that people are too aloof to care, though things like economic approach, attitude,
things besides actual execution of economic measures and what are actually current
economic questions make for the marquis sessions and dialogue here. This is what
makes things like the G – 20 so sanctimonious from the standpoint of economic theory,
which they apparently are : This is in contrast to Jackson Hole and other meetings of a
more informal type and that are not in all efforts prospective and speak to the thoughts of
economic management and control – this might be what is wrong with the picture and
with P.R.C. having this same approach to its own, very pluralistic and large, markets; the
tone of “management” and so forth of economic factors. In the world of capitalism, a way
to ruin or to turn an economy upside down is to apply economic management and public
– sector controls to the system. This happened in the U.S. in the 1960’s with the “Great
Society” theme that pervaded the public at the time and that resulted for various reasons
in the “stagflation” and other wrongs that reified the U.S. economy later in the 1970’s,
leading to the overall, and absolutely incorrect, accounting approach to public and
government finances that has us counting the hill of beans many public capitols are
today. This is perhaps the fault of the preponderance of and dissemination of the tricky
and “smoke and mirrors” public finance ideas and practices of the soviets who given the
circumstances would open their recipe book for people, a book that was padded, for
example, with war booty, forced ethnic and societal migrations, open lies about how the
soviet people were all being fed, and the like. So much so that people indeed were fooled
and accounting schemes today and leading up to today, in government are just as rife as
among the famous stock – company lies as anything. In many cases, and while the
country accounts of a state such as U.K. contain very few errors, and none really
intentionally wrong nor incorrect, the country accounts of places in the Near East, for
instance, and others, border on complete fiction and are geared towards an un – extant,
rosy picture of things.
The Chinese had their own “Great Society” [Da Tong] that used the same methods as
those that worked in the U.S., etc., and that produced the cultural revolution in all its
corruption, repression, economic disasters, even frequent violence individually and on
mass scales. The Chinese are recovering from this and from their blackened and
extremely violent and vengeful records as revolutionaries [“Maoists”] that is so scary to
people and that has been a given since 1949. One might hope and pray that President
Xi, in arriving early in Germany for his meeting, wants to soak up, though not by osmosis,
but through methods having to do with quality and profound change for the better given
their implementation in P.R.C. and elsewhere to good effect in the Far East. Among the
issues P.R.C. has are automobile and technology innovation and manufacture, actually,
and given these on a very high level in Germany right now, especially in the areas of
flexible automobile manufacturing and advanced computing and plasma technology
being realized by more Germans right now, it is entirely purposeful for the P.R.C.
President to allow for this in his G – 20 visit. The innovation mentioned here has to do
with product and process invention and innovation, yes, but with the immigration and
other people questions Germany is responding to now, this all currently encompasses
geo – spatial and policy issues at the same time – a really big set of topics to have at
discussion for agenda, talking, attitudes and personalities and other official dialoguing
subject matters.
G – 20 Mission Information ( click here.)
Other G – 20 information.
Wiki : G – 20 background ( click here.)
Michael (non!), Daniel Barenboim’s Bach

Recording &#8...
Saturday, July 08, 2017
DANIEL BARENBOIM – “WELL – TEMPERED CLAVIER”, BOOK II, BY JOHANN
SEBASTIAN BACH, WARNER CLASSICS.
THINK : Many musical people do try the cycle through Bach’s piano works and there is a
universe of Bach piano recordings out there since Glenn Gould and associates brought
these more to people’s attention starting in the 1960’s. Strangely, I had a Zenith compact
phonograph as a boy and would steal father’s “Well – Tempered Clavier” and other Bach
piano and little by little got to know about these sorts of recordings and the tones and
deep musical ideas and themes that go into them. Bach had many styles that come out in
his work despite today’s comments by many that “it doesn’t really sound like the
pianoforte” of old or “like the harpsichord” or “not like Mozart” or “too long” or other things,
including “not like Glenn Gould”. The Gould recordings are highly suggested though there
are others and for live performances, while I do suggest Maestro Barenboim I continue to
miss his playing of these sorts of things (and the live ones, really); though Andras Schiff
gives stupendous renditions of Bach on the piano that are greatly memorable live. Never
make the mistake that recorded music is a substitute for live and there are piano masters
and virtuosos who sound greatly better, who lift the spirits more, with the live
performances and these are not to be missed.
Maestro Barenboim gave years ago a cycle of Mozart piano that was so perfect it
annoyed the ears after maybe the tenth time I played it. This recording of Bach is equally
outstanding and with its harmonies between right and left hand, the independent notes
that have both working with the same counts and time together and the like. One thing
one notices with the Bach on piano is it does seem simple and maybe even a little slow in
tempo over the life of any piece, though the playing is over sometimes as the listener
finds oneself at the end of any playing without being able to remember the start – this is a
pathmark of the rich compositions for piano of all ages. Mozart actually worked against
this in many ways as illustrated his pieces sometimes depend upon themes recurring
every so often that refer to the start of different pieces and then to other pieces
altogether. Schubert with a melodic style and with very happy imagery and a folksy tone
to his pieces sometimes is similar.
Nonetheless, nothing beats Maestro Barenboim’s Bach that has the ears anticipating his
notes that are as the original composer would want them on a piano in the modern age.
Again, the Gould recordings are the subject of discussion at first, really, when such music
becomes the topic of anything, though the Gould recordings themselves, without being
completely shelved have a special place in any music library next to the media of the
living and Barenboim is far from the end in his from the ground up virtuosity in the
playing, tonality and sound, melody and all of these “Well – tempered” pieces composed
so long ago. For those who know nothing of classical music, and rarely do I review
musical pieces and should probably do more, the Brandenburg Concerts are a good
place to start, as are these pieces and as played by Barenboim are sublime and while
maybe not easy to understand, are not whatsoever challenging nor stifling for the musical
ear, as for example, John Ives’ or [Arnold] Schoenberg’s compositions might be for the
beginner or even for someone who has listened for a number of years. A case in point is I
had always known of Schoenberg and his style, but was over the age of forty for having
heard it for the first time. I do not know if this is common, though with what I had been
taught of the person I did not seek him out. This review is a little survey of things and the
writer hopes that the reader does not mind of it : The world of the piano is such that we
might all make some music in it, though very, very few are good at it and within the
universe of the piano there are many of what a physicist might call sub – universes or
“subverses” of musical compositions, styles and associated circles of virtuosity.
Choose one and follow it. Maestro Barenboim in this interconnected and increasingly
complex world of recorded and other media, and the chaos outside the artist’s hall or
studio make one want to take refuge and pause at least for a while to listen and educate
ourselves not about an age of Bach long – past, nor of those who have passed as his
musical descendants (maybe those, too, if one wishes) but with Barenboim in his
performances and media that make things live as creations that invite new ideas and
memories. This is an outstanding recording of the piano by Bach and will live itself,
standing alone, if one will allow the term, for a long time caeteris paribus. As for the live
Bach I wish you well. A finely great, excellent recording.
Remember, Critically, the Pacific War in 1945 —

the Victo...
Sunday, July 09, 2017
Fifty years after Hiroshima — Kai Bird and Larry Lifschultz – Hiroshima’s Shadow (1998,
Pamphleteer’s Press) and with text Introduction by Joseph Rotblat.
1. This text is reviewed while reading in effort cover to cover and then making attempts
to prioritize where and what to speak of concerning the editor’s values themselves
that first fall upon Joe Rotblat, an émigré from the old world to the States (Poland)
almost at the time Hitler invaded and decimated Central Europe with Blitzkrieg
tactics and resources so formidable he won battles at will despite heroic resistance
by Polish and other armies. Joe Rotblat mentions many things to resolve the frame
of psyche of anyone of the mind to read the book, including an indirect history of
WWII armaments and their commemoration at the Smithsonian in 1995 that was
scrapped. The Smithsonian exhibit had difficulties but that were not beyond just
hanging the Enola Gay from the ceiling as planned and being done with it. What
arose in view of the presentation in the first place were plenty of opinions on how to
dress up the museum with details about Allied victory in the Pacific War (ending with
the bombing of Japan in August 1945) and these were so conflicted and some
completely misinformed the project became extremely complex in scope and what
would appear and what would be censored, that the entire thing was put in the
garbage and the plane left to again fly around the country, or to stay in its hanger
somewhere presumably in Virginia. The text, starting with the Introduction and
edited by Bird and Lifschultz is greatly detailed and has many facets that apply in
retrospect to the perhaps doubted perhaps pre – mature use if any use of nuclear
weapons, or a nuclear weapon over Japan. The Hiroshima bomb was dropped first
at August 6, 1945, a uranium bomb detonated not far above the ground at
Hiroshima at about 8 : 15 A.M. local time. The Nagasaki bomb was a plutonium
bomb that was detonated at about 11 : 00 A.M. Japan time on August 9. The
significance of these weapons being used has been for years at the same time
apocalyptic and very superstitious, and above all the right thing to do by the Truman
administration; and differently an atrocity, severally and by the entirety not only
against Japan, but against the human race past and present at the time and today.
The dropping of these machines and the destructive blasts they produced over their
targets that were construed as military, but whose victims included non –
combattants in the thousands, especially the Nagasaki device, changed the model
for warfare from total war to things that people cannot speak of and that presently
and potentially threaten the existence of everyone to the extent of even controlled
proliferation and then experimentation and testing, then to potentialities, that are
real, of actual use. The decision by President Truman to use atomic weaponry might
have been the result of a project that was fighting any number of opposing factors
reified by the Japanese, some psychological, some with tangible and deadly reality
to back them up. This writing is composed to allow for a set of ideas that an
informed reader might chance to opine here, and that Bird and Lifschultz did not
ignore, same just did not examine the narrator’s here as one is reading the book
almost twenty years later, in 2017 when the book was originally in hardback (1996)
and then softback that many people apparently bought also (1998). Current narrator
learned in a study of the text the Japanese armies had retreated to hills within the
main islands, Kyushu and Honshu, Japan. With guerilla tactics, maybe even as
planned tree – to – tree, etc., as Japan is, the home country troops would have let
invaders or occupiers install themselves in the valley urban areas and then
skirmished and ambushed, booby – trapped, and entrapped their occupiers right out
of victory, to mention it mildly yet literally, from the hilly parts of the country that are
many and that would have helped the guerillas even to shell and to rocket the urban
areas in any invasion attempt by the Allies as planned on Honshu for November
1945, and for Kyushu in March 1946, barring the effects of the nuclear blasts where
they happened. This now clear, read the book.
2. At the end of the text just about is an essay by the very gifted and well – known
ethicist John Rawls. This is worth the price of the book in and of itself, but do read
the other essays as even the Stimson and Fussell essays and other articles are
greatly interesting and make the science of the bomb understandable while leaving
the use of same really a matter of choice. Rawls applies the principles of the
Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings to present – day India, Pakistan, P.R.C., North
Asia and other places. What does he say? Read the book. It is greatly interesting
how Rawls, in typical fashion, breaks the larger problem – model in to subparts and
ones that are manageable : State leadership, military and arms, non – combattants
as civilians. There are other features to his levels of analysis including human rights,
the morality in the day of the use of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man”, the conduct of war
and peace, philosophical evils and philosophical goods, end justified by the mean,
the evils of Nazism, that the nuclear devices saved lives (and they did given the
tearing apart of the occupying army that would have happened without a surrender
after the blasts), statesmanship that was proper and appropriate by the Allies, soviet
issues, democracy, prerogatives of the President and so on. All these features
provoked into dialogue with the reader by moral principles and distinctions common
sense makes when confronted with nuclear policy. To not examine the nuclear
dilemma in this light is to miss opportunities to look at the destruction (real and
figurative, metaphorical, too), pretenses and restraints of nuclear policies in the day
and today also. I have no idea, though the principles and ideas in detailed form in
the 660 – page path through the text make is full of classical themes and modes and
levels of analysis. If there is a recent classic on cataclysms and total war and how
they happened such as in WWII, this is one at least. Great!
WHY POLITICIZING HEALTH CARE IS

STRANGE : AN INCORRECT POLICY.
Thursday, July 20, 2017
Even though the current GOP health care
bill is currently stalled in the Senate, the
world continues to revolve around
Washington, D.C., what with the U.S.
President’s two trips to Europe within two
weeks; one to assuage international
economics concerns about the bellwether
U.S. currency and economy and the second to the Republic of France to allow for a
stronger alliance with “America’s oldest ally” [paraphrase here]. There is also the news,
and another hassle for the corridors of power, the actual ones, accusing the President
and separately his son with consorting with Russian security services people in so –
called, and entirely misinterpreted ‘secret’ meetings. Even at the depth of the Cold War,
and then is certainly not today, U.S. leaders and their associates met routinely with
U.S.S.R. people, even their actual secret organs in meetings among associates across
borders, and the mutual respect for each other’s integrity, really, is a legacy of that. The
old KGB has criminals, but for the most part has people of integrity and honor and with a
world view, even fearful and at least respectful of the U.S. This is what gets this narrator
is the various responsible elements in the media for the cooked up stories about the
Trumps colluding with the former soviet union (Russian Federation) are misguided and
just plain out in left field : As a university student who partly engaged in Third World
studies, or what was referred to as the Third World at the time, “The South” and the like,
and what is referred to now categorically as “developing countries”; I had close
acquaintances from everywhere below the equator. All excellent people, and yes, some
communist and no one ever uttered a shameful nor condemning term as the result of this
nor these associations. The people are back in South America, the Islands, Southeast
Asia, Africa and the like. They have their educations and have built on that while no one
refers nor has ever referred to politics in our very numerous meetings over studies and
ground – up policies we both struggled over, trying to reason through and comprehend
under the umbrella at college. For the information of the reader, parts of Germany itself
during the Cold War were poorer economically and more elitist, corrupt, physically
dangerous, a cataclysm compared to the civil order of some of the island nations for
instance where things were presumedly backward for a long time, but not really so.
Everyone has met others from foreign countries and territories and had respectful and
redeeming, learning relationships with these that are cultural and educational in nature –
as much has been the mission of mankind in a lot of what we know as the jet and space
age where one can travel cheaply and visit places with a personal message and
significance that touches everyone around when we / you are there. This has been true
for more than fifty years since the war in Korea, and the thick of the Cold War, even
previous to that.
To return to health care : Health care, the current Republican administration realizes is
not about co – pays, really, nor is it about policy costs and underwriting, complicated plan
changes and transitions and conditions of previous health problems – everyone under the
sun who deals with health insurance and health care providers has these issues and
same are fundamental to maintaining insurance coverage for most everyone of us. In the
English – speaking world, and we are in this like it or not, life is full of people and difficult
it is to categorize and class all these same people health – wise. The Obama presidency
in its health care legislation and planning, duplicated a health and welfare system with a
1960’s mission and message, when there were no real deficits, the Treasury was flush,
and the economy might have still been growing at five to seven percent per year.
Unfortunately, the 1960’s were then and there are much tighter purse strings everywhere
these days due to factors beyond the scope of this writing, though one might mention
here the duplicative nature of the Obama health and welfare programs that decimated the
Treasury, not just the two wars that were winding down from years ago. At the same time
as deficitary federal spending were the teetering financial institutions, threats from
overseas business and commerce that refused to purchase U.S. goods due to any
number of factors, capital flight (extremely dangerous for a stable fabric of society), and
some other things in the world of federal expenditures, some absolutely necessary, not
much was coming into the U.S. Treasury, actually, as mostly unannounced, the U.S.
economy had greatly faltered into a crises – ridden landscape or lake – scape, electronic
and computerized, instantaneous if you will, but all – in – all greatly poorer over the span
of the Obama presidency. That without TARP and some other lending and financial
facilities where finances were made easier than ordinary for business and economic
recovery as intended. One cannot have a viable health insurance system that is federal
under economic conditions as these. Even before becoming president, the chief
executive would pledge things at the same time as betraying a lack of knowledge of
simple macroeconomics.
Good health insurance systems are self – funding, self – regulating, and pay for
themselves and / or at least the benefits of people with healthier outlooks than otherwise.
One cannot cover all, nor virtually all the health care recipients within national borders, at
least in an equal fashion and with equal imperatives and priorities : The actual public
health care system in the U.S. and the one promoted by the Obamas is heavily
mechanized and systematized, lethargic and leviathan. One person in ten, with health
issues as same are, in a reinsurance situation, with catastrophic coverage, and without
bet the compulsory insurance that has cost all of us so much, can survive in good health
and good conduct within the pool of overall insurable and healthy people. There is a way
to do this that allows for everyone to have unnecessary coverage and that includes,
essentially, the use of systemic slack to assimilate and absorb higher cost, higher – risk
and higher maintenance people. The idea is to do away with the health maintenance idea
for many people and to underwrite higher – end, pay – as – you – go – type insurance for
many people. This is made difficult by the Obama attempt to enthrone health
“maintenance” as the primary emphasis of health care. The reasoning behind this is so
convoluted, complex and complicated that is smacks of self – dealing and landmark self –
interest (“I want to be a hero here” – type interest.) Much of that has to do with
reputational, cosmetic and other hype. That type of thinking about health care was also
possible, e.g., when the dollar was worth maybe five times what it is today due to inflation
and trade terms, and the discretions on commerce of the great powers all of us think
about every day. This is corrupt reasoning that has people going back to clinic again and
again, for procedures and many times unneeded things again and again – all making for
a frenzy of hospital and clinic activities which have really only marginal value to the
institution of care and then to customer – patients. There are many other significant
details, but the primary ones here must be that HMO’s as the Obama plans were / are,
are NOT insurance, really; second – health insurance and insurance overall are NOT
free, nor do same have the nature of utilitarian boons for patients; and health insurance is
not an investment of any kind, nor is most any insurance that depends upon what the
word actually means in the literal sense prima facie and then in its diverse forms. This is
easy to prove as the Obama health care system is so expensive and so cosmetic, really,
has so many people in patienthood that the etiology in ailments under this system cannot
end. It just leads to more and more ills and / or different forms of the same cont
“Hegemony” or Protecting the Home Country?

The...
Sunday, July 30, 2017
There has been lots of talk in the press about the increasing influences of the Chinese
administration and especially concerning its military in the far – reaching Asia – Pacific
region since about the time the Yuan was more or less put on a free – floating regime vis
– a – vis other world currencies. The Chinese know themselves as other people in the
world do that the military itself depends sometimes delicately on an entire symphony of
factors – socioeconomic, demographic, cultural, scientific and commercial also, and
others – and the recent military muscle of the PLA that has become apparent is the result
of some years’ planning on the part of the current P.R.C. president and premier and the
People’s Congress in Bei jing. It has never been clear to this narrator why, for example,
in this modern age of mutually assured [atomic] destruction, non – nuclear weapons of
mass destruction, the armies as they are maintained by national budgets and so forth to
be used to resolve conflicts (even conflicts between man and nature such as flood,
quake, monsoon and typhoon, etc.) – why the government departments in many
countries that supervise military missions are so bloated and overblown. This is
apparently all under the guise of preparedness and combat readiness, and the ability to
win wars, especially in repulsing the efforts at invasion, for example the P.R.C. military
believes in at this time. The PLA also apparently has headline policies around responding
to provocation and rallying to defend the people, serving the people and the like. These
values are adequate maybe under those of the cultural revolution and have been
headline values of the PLA, apparently again, since the opening of China in the 1970’s –
the response to democracy movements, human rights movements, Falun Gong, and
incidents at the forbidden city have been part and parcel of this. Though the PLA in this
way, with its human precision and greatly – trained manpower, with this has more the
aura of an invasive and intrusive police force, and the mission as well of the army in
intelligence gathering and expanding Chinese policy contacts and networks overseas is
apparent under PLA sponsorship at the same time : One might remark that the most
culturally and politically friendly of states and allies have these sorts of threads running
through their youth cultures especially. The youth culture in many countries, with its
different and adventurous travels, voyages and stories lived, and ideals about the the
status quos everywhere and change, has always been grounds upon which individuals
expressed themselves freely about society’s institutions in the home territories, how they
are similar and different and the like. This is normal and these sorts of exchanges have
always proved to bring about progress and policy innovations, as well as changing
politics and the home rule everywhere.
The world is far from a rosy place, to paraphrase Xi Jin ping of China in his latest talk
about the PLA, and in order to assure the continuance of the peaceful home rule in
P.R.C., safeguarding the peace at the interior and in foreign regions nearby on land and
on the Pacific seas at least appears to be the openly stated military policy of the country
right now. Many people are very dissatisfied that the P.R.C. leadership literally does not
corral the DPRK regime into abating its offensive missiles program, especially those
missiles possibly and probably that in any escalated conflict will carry nuclear ordinance.
The failing of China here is not to have brought down the militarism of North Korea, but to
not have stated openly that it does not interfere in Asia – Pacific affairs where not wanted
and not required. This is a good example of a ‘soft – power’ doctrine that pervaded
politics in years past to today that has the PLA and its air and naval forces flexing their
muscles at home while essentially reviewing and acting to stabilize the overall state of
military affairs in Asia – Pacific. This sort of work, and by a very large fighting force that
needs resources and needs to be fed, is rife with problems including interpretations as to
the overall will, good or ill, about the modernization and reform of the P.R.C. military (J20,
rockets, aircraft carrier), to the reliance on the PLA for UN peacekeeping missions, and
missions to keep peace, or essentially to preserve the peace in areas of conflict. The
current showing of the PLA and its various accessories is purported to be focused on the
home rule at this point, and without regionally hegemonistic nor other foreign – oriented
defense goals. Should this prove to be true over time, the power of the PLA when
compared neutrally with the Red Army of the Russian Federation and forces of various
countries including India and Pakistan in South Asia, could prove to be a boon to world
peace as a regional, continental and international status quo.
Founded after the Nanjing uprising in 1927, the PLA has no dearth of heroes and human
icons, though this in great part, while respectable to communists is not greatly regarded
in the West. Knowing a few of these for everyone might build bridges over cultural and
socioeconomic venues and questions, though there is no real authoritative history of the
PLA anywhere, for example, in the U.S. One drawback of this is the army in China is
given the mission overall of serving the people and at times, as with the Red Guards of
old, does the people a disservice in all its elitist planning and rank and file. That
communists might be accused of elitism is an oxymoron, though this appears to be the
case in a military that is structured on if not duplicative, though this is changing, of the
soviet style of the role of the military during the 1980’s – 2000’s. This all shows that the
PLA is more than anthems and slogans, something considerable and possibly
counterbalancing the Russian Federation in the Asia – Pacific region right now.
INSTEAD OF TAKING A NUMBER, CHOOSE
ONE.
Sunday, August 13, 2017
The “Week in Pictures” as it appears online every week from the NEW YORK TIMES is a
boon for the overall popularity of this online edition of the paper and something I got
introduced to some years ago when reading the paper religiously for hours on end
sometimes. The idea of the “Week in Pictures” is that while a single image can tell a
thousand words, or say a thousand things, the slideshow online at NYT each week is
extremely high – impact and the images are taken and produced by the world’s greatest
and most talented press photographers. The wheel of life for many continues its infinite
and always forward – motion continuum, yet the pictures that NYT publishes each week
in this column, while not stopping the world, have changed it and the perspective on it
many have – from the coast of CA, U.S.A., one might see the events of Parliament in
U.K., those in North Korea, Bosnia, Moscow and other places and people. The overall
meaning of just posting pictures is up for interpretation, mostly from the friends of those
who post this type of content at social media sites, but the images posted at “Week in
Pictures” show electronic, mostly, imaging at its best and brightest.
One does not have to get in line, any line of any sort, to see the NYT pictures as a simple
internet connections is required only. The photos, one after the other, are at times a
sounding and resounding symphony of magnitude of the great Berlioz or other loud, or
equally gifted and melodious composers. Or the images can be as soft, delightful, light
and discrete as a well – thought – out and played piano or violin sonata. Music is the
easiest medium to have to illustrate such things for the narrator here as one’s musical
training preceded everything else, and this from Bossanova to Ellington, to English
Invasion to the Baroque and modern classical, … . One could go on and on about the
meaning of this subject matter and that the narrator here again has been delinquent on
going back to view the weekly images by NYT invites not just a sense of guilt for all the
work and toil, emotion and again, resounding old – fashioned set – up time and work to
produce such things, not to mention the expenses for background, education and the
equipment of the personnel involved, but a sense of loss at the photos missed that
appear only once a week and that make one laugh, shed tears, feel boredom, shatter
one’s images of “the other” or the way things are supposed to appear or work
themselves.
Photography is not a sport, nor is it a game, the end result of much imaging is very
difficult and painstaking work that requires years of training to refine and perfect enough
to engage in the profession, a quite recent one, of photo – journalism. In this respect, and
concerning the talents of all of us to first perceive, then to see further and then take our
pictures on our own that are posted at home on boards or doors, and then again equally
importantly on social media, remember at least once in a while to go back to school to
take the trouble to enter the URL of “Week in Pictures”, search for it, and / or bookmark
this portion of the NYT online in your browser. The photos will even teach new emotions
apart from allowing first the happiness that comes from ‘seeing is believing’ and the
greatly detailed and painstaking pictures, the mad / sad / happy / glad / angry – fear that
arise sometimes when one sees on occasion an image itself that provokes these. There
are other sources of such pictures right now – “National Geographic”, “LIFE”, “Time”
magazine, even “The Inquirer”, and so on, though this periodical consistently and without
interruption and without fail produces overall great, great photo compendium each week,
however few images in number that are published online, that one is in sin not to be
aware of them. Narrator encourages everyone to read NYT in paper or online and then
seen the paper, see the slideshow. Great!
Random – “Week in Pictures”, by the NEW YORK TIMES
SUMMER OF LOVE – “Week in Pictures”
Yao, by Yao Ming / Ric Bucher (Hyperion Books,

2005). Late Review.
Monday, August 21, 2017
YAO, by Yao Ming and Ric Bucher (Hyperion Books, 2004). Late Review.
Hardly has there originated from the old country in a while, and there are nonetheless
people as Ming who come from there every so often, a public figure of such character
that the idea of his personality, while never aloof, is above the ordinary politics and
gossip, chaos and other vicissitudes of the day. Maybe due to his studies of Confucius,
and these not take lightly, and that Confucius as a study is much more than feeding back
his various truisms and axioms, etc. One might in fact ask of Ming “why do you study
ancients like Confucius?” The answer might be, and equally respectfully in return “why do
you study what you do, here in the U.S.?”
While the current narrator is hardly a great, great basketball fan, and more of college
basketball than the NBA (in fact, I could hardly tell who won the league title last year, and
not for loss of memory or anything — I watched the semis and the final, and more or less
that was it.) On the other hand, the Rockets are among the teams I look for in the news
and know that Ming was their first – round, first – pick in 2002 when the great Rudi
Tomjanovich was still the team’s trainer. The owner and managers of the Rockets did not
just view Ming as a prospect or a “candidate”, but were committed to him as a person
who happens and who makes good things happen. This proven, the Rockets were solidly
committed to Ming and his NBA career, and for many, many, many reasons, including
what appropriate priorities should be given sports and the pursuit of sports, not just
exercise, become apparent when talked about by the various superstars and the like.
Ming’s story from his humble beginnings in Shang hai to the PRC national basketball
team to the NBA is a greatly compelling one and one of a humble servant to stakeholders
and observers, audiences and spectators alike.
Yao Ming comes from a basketball – playing family also : While living under the one –
child policy in PRC, his parents had backgrounds in the sport of basketball enviable for
anyone, both his mother and father. His home, a place one never leaves in spirit if one is
Chinese, is a city that is greatly under – rated and that is a hotbed of its own. Ming, from
his own, personal story here, while showing great abilities in sport in fact worthy of any
prima – donna or again, superstar, and while keeping those abilities intact; is a great fan
of “mind over matter”, and “no one gets it right the first time, every time”. Ming knows and
knew what he could do in changing his playing home from Shang hai to Houston, and
then in paving the way, maybe not in an absolute sense as other sports stars preceded
him, for a more internationalized and cross – border U.S. professional basketball
association. The weight of this, in fact for someone of considerable abilities, was not lost
on Ming, who came to the U.S. with these sorts of big picture goals in mind – the text is
full of them and with his “engage the process” and “finish the process” ideas and sports
and other abstractions that are mostly not the purview of less – studied athletes as Mr.
Ming is. The Chinese Basketball Association did not want to let go of Ming, and for selfish
and administrative reasons : He had been “the” team since signing with the Shang hai
Sharks basketball juniors some years ago at age fourteen, and then the senior team that
again allowed Ming to anchor the franchise during his time left playing hoops in China
while waiting and playing on the Sharks and the national team for an NBA team to draft
and sign him. This happened with the Houston Rockets who needed a center to replace
Hakeem Olajuwan (sp?) and who’d seen the fluid and savvy, experienced play of this
twenty – year – old. Drafted by the Rockets in 2002, Ming played against Carl Malone,
Sabonis, Shaq, and other great tall types from the NBA in his early twenties. Risk taker?
Of course, but he calculated his risks and benefits and burdens of success and then
considered other factors in his choice to play and enjoy superstar status in the NBA. At
the same time with all the big egos in basketball, with all the self – made people and their
individual achievements, Ming believes no man is alone in his achievements and
success, nor in the journey to there at any time. This shows great influences including the
influences of Ming’s parents, themselves great athletes and supportive, encouraging to
their son who is the hope, at least in part, of modernizing sports in China for the future.
This process itself, of the change and continuous change that Ming honors, his Confucian
ideas, and his commitment to things, certainly given these goals implicit for anyone of his
place in life, without finitude and an end as some might interpret it all, has promise for
Ming and his vision of a modern and more competitive world of basketball.
Tet Mau Than — HUE 1968, by Mark Bowden

(and the sign of ...
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
Hue, Viet Nam – 1968 : Tet Mau Than
HUE 1968, by Mark Bowden (2017)
This greatly compelling narrative for those whose memories of the Viet war are still good,
and for those seeking some survey level of analysis of the fear and alarm of the same
conflict, not only in Saigon itself and in Viet territory but at the same time at home in the
U.S. due to the draft, issues around who was actually in charge of the war, the conduct of
the Pentagon and its various doctrines to save Southeast Asia, the press in America and
abroad by the entirety that very early on detracted from stating the war as anything but
atrocious (some parts of the book are un – reviewable); the facets are endless and
extend from dialogue in the leadership everywhere in the States down to fragmentation of
the nuclear family due to what was happening with boys and the draft at the time many
needed to be in post – secondary educational programs, and especially with the mothers,
girls and spouses of these same when coming home damaged, many irretrievably. That
there were and are these facets that remain in the collective psyche about Viet Nam
gives one a source of gloom and doom and overall pessimism about what it means to
engage in, then try to win a war quite far away, and win it again against the intelligence
services of the soviets who were / are a jet hop away from Hanoi. Consider it. Consider
also that Minh Ho Chi, who made himself available as a future Viet personality or leader
to a number of Western Institutions, even socialist ones then termed “humanistic” or
“progressive”; read “girls’ schools”, and who was rejected thus causing much bitterness
among society in Viet Nam and an eventual cultural schism over political issues and
communism, then followed by things being divided at the 18 th parallel, minus one. The
imagery of this is in ghastly fashion recorded in this book and others preceding it,
possibly and probably necessary in order to convey the place in world society of the Viet
people – all without, withouts, completely without, and North or South, completely and
utterly frustrated at the destruction and death of it and without a voice before the world
forum, nor judiciary, nor the financial system, nor any recognizable institution. The only
way the world could actually hear during the time of the war what the real peace and light
goals for both sides there was to go and look, or to believe what was announced by the
SEATO, a credible association, really, that ceased to exist at the end of the Viet war on or
about the late 1970’s. In this short writing is part of the message of this book, told from
the perspective of a researched insider, and in simple language the author takes us
through a month of routine fighting at HUE on the Perfume River.
With over five hundred pages of greatly detailed, journalistic, very credible narrative, this
book draws some bright lines that in previous literature, not there including in the texts on
the subject by Karnow, Halberstam and even including to an extent the Viet authors
themselves. The author studied what happened and without the dreaded Hegelian or
ultra – liberal, flowery levels of analysis that are in some of these texts, produced a
commendable volume of quite organized and verifiable summaries, not just of the
preparations and carrying out of orders by both sides, but of personal stories of the
exemplary heroes who made the fight alone; there are numerous examples of this in the
book. Due to the effects of enemy intelligence throughout the Viet war for the Americans,
and there is no body of work to really un – tangle this and the secrecy of it invites no
amount of curiosity from English – speaking peoples, our leadership in the field and
officials in every government department depended heavily upon boys who were forced
to learn about warfare as they went along, and this for the most part. This is why Cronkite
might have said in the first place, after examining in part the battlefield in his trip to HUE
to look into things, is the very specialized and focused, trained and tested guerillas in
great part, could not be stopped over the longer term. Cronkite believed this,
undoubtedly, and thus his announcement on CBS Evening News to the American and
world public became irrefutable. HUE was a royal capital and Viet’s third – largest city. A
test case for what would happen in the South some time later. This press announcement
in this own narrator’s humble view and the level of communication used to issue it – the
popular media – with all the leviathan and massively psychological power and other
implications of it, was of greater detriment to the American soldier at HUE, at Khe San, in
Quang Tri, in the Northern Territories, and especially in Saigon and it surroundings, than
the announcement of bombing halts then above the eighteenth parallel. The reasons in
this text are not as might be illustrated in an occasional crux sentence or two as the
narrative is end to end filled with the implications of both the Cronkite visit and the orders
of the chief executive. Remember there is build – up administratively to each of these.
Remember also, if you are American and look other Americans in the eye, it might be a
good idea to try a read at this. Not only is there ghastly narrative, but the individual stories
of actual people, in the fighting areas and outside the effects and gory details of arms and
their use, stories of how souls of bright young people are tried, and as was in the case of
the Americans in that place, true. In its own way, Bowden’s Somalia story, and as
produced for film, is quite different by the nature of the methods of these military people
to advance and the balance all these entered in those efforts. The two books are not the
same, though same might complement one another : one pre – civilian – urban guerillas,
the preceding one postmodern in the same sense.
DEEP THINKING (2017), BY Garry Kasparov.

Saturday, September 02, 2017
DEEP THINKING : Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins, by
Garry Kasparov (2017, Hachette – Public Affairs Books.)
For human endeavors as part of everyday life, the creative and innovative, inventive
processes everywhere happen as human initiative, ambition and skills play a more
important role in human intelligence than ever before : This along with the utterances
“newer is not always better” and a vocabulary of humble “humility in expertise”, promises,
threats to success, and other conceptual framing around the overall difficulty and
uncertainty of our lives. Machines have no real feelings and cannot dream, nor can these
really engage the human creative process that Mr. Kasparov models for us and
encourages throughout this text that captures as well most if not all the complete details
of his chess career, not as an Azeri, but as a citizen of the world and of the world of
championship chess – a game that crosses borders, territories and continents with its
various defenses and strategic moves, positions and so on. Mr. Kasparov here has
composed a captivating narrative that talks about the world of chess and that of a game
scientifically, technically and technologically inspired and a part of life, or even way of life
that has great creativity from within the human mind and soul, despite the application of
computers to it in quite deterministic ways. Mr. Kasparov views the pervasiveness of
computers as an opportunity to take part in imaginative and creative projects, tasks,
activities and overall work that are greatly appealing to the reader, and one can really get
puffed up at the possibilities and potentialities even given the ever – present computing
universe that controls much of our life’s experience at this time of humanity.
“Newer is not always better”, though without getting some ambition and going out and
getting things or ‘going for it’, we are not taking part in a vital way in the human
enterprise, where ambition, imagination and creativity above all play a greater and
greater role. With the increasing influence of technology and computers over our lives. A
way to respond or keep ahead of this for many people, on the new frontiers of the future,
as we all had been taught by our elders, in keeping ahead of uncertainty and other
challenges, we continue diligently our ways with attention to the subject matter of the day,
sometimes into intense concentration if the stakes are high, and this while knowing
machines cannot dream or aspire to things, things material and things human. In this
way, the author of the text encourages us all to keep creative, keep dreaming and turn
your ideas and dreams into reality. This process is more promising than the risk and
negative slack of technical and technological defeats and disasters. The power of it and
the promise of it despite occasional contradictions in one’s dialogue with machines, and
despite uncertainty and other challenges the axiom remains “onward and upward”, and
this dialogue given human communication skills, ambition (again), and foresight,
imagination and determination to add to the taxonomy here.
The time 1996 – 2006 for the spectacle of man – machine chess technologies,
challenges, games and matches, was indeed a very short, but also very intense time for
chess players and the game of chess alike. The science fiction of Asimov and Arthur C.
Clarke (of 2001 – A Space Odyssey fame) that assimilates and informs the game of
chess so well has, despite developments that are very technically important and
important to the consumer, taken a step in a different direction away from chess and
other games, and allowed for the stimulative and spectacle, light – show or special –
effects show – type media and other events. This is not conducive, really, to the
reasonably challenging and more reality – oriented game of chess and of the scale and
potential scope of the game at this time. This dialogue between humans and computers
and then back again has to do with subject matter sometimes found in high impact
biology, psychology and philosophy, and technology concepts, principles and ideas that
have creative applications at the same time not to interfere with, yet to encourage
development of new ideas, creative and innovative, inventive processes that we are all so
dependent upon since some time ago. Some other terms Mr. Kasparov uses in his text
are “collaboration”, preparation and practice, inspiration and opportunity, brutal honesty
and others, and this without an ethics test, creativity test or moral test at the end. In all
events, read this book(!) as a chess book telling the story of one’s own challenges – first
in the realm of human challenges, and then to machine challenges where the technology
medium at hand does exactly as it is told, does not get tired, and cannot be stopped save
for some very narrow circumstances. DEEP BLUE (I.B.M.) and DEEP THOUGHT
(Carnegie Mellon), along with various versions of “FRITZ” took the gaming world on a
wild ride over the course of 1996 – 2006, and all these machines were developed
additionally with more and more circuits and more powerful software as time went on,
and have helped make Mr. Kasparov reflect upon the value of these and their
development as either a response to human endeavors itself, or developed by human
efforts that are ambitious and risk adjusted; your analysis, please. It is important as well
that Mr. Kasparov’s methods here are knowledge – based as the ambitions and
ambitious he speaks of are based on this at the same time. This is an outstanding text
with many, many scientific ideas on current computerized scientific mapping and
virtualization, a human dialogue with technology and technical and technological
approaches to activities and their implementation, and better than any software or
workflow manual I have handled. That the human mind and computers are in a silent
race for sometimes the same goals and then different, risky, divergent and uncertain
goals have to do with the text here also, and one idea that is of considerable depth in the
approach to chess and then to technology overall is a knowledge of the human
capabilities of mind and one’s own intellect and skills versus just wanting to achieve
things. Great!
Power Is to Become Cheap and Clean, … .

Sunday, September 03, 2017
POWER IS TO BECOME CHEAP AND CLEAN … .
ISSUES ON MY MIND : Strategies for the Future, by George P. Shultz, foreword by

Henry Kissinger (2013, Hoover Press.)
When political science began some time ago, and then was first updated after WWII by
George Shultz and people like him, the concept of the political unit was based upon the
nation – state. This carried the day for a long time until, maybe starting with the PLO –
Alitalia incident that was a precedent for many events and eventually in the story books
about 9 / 11, the area of conflict was not nationalist nor nation – state – based, nor
regionally based, but had become as the modern war as waged by plain – clothed and
well – camped and trained, even paramilitary people, that do not really at all attack nor
seek to undermine people themselves of the nation – state nor any regional status quo at
the center of civilizations; but assaults and attacks aimed at the institutions that
civilization has built and cultivated and rallies around. Concerning this and the rise of
various parties to it, directly and indirectly – Islam, Iran, China, parts of Africa, Russia,
Cuba, even the Tamils in Ceylon – there are everyday and extraordinary challenges at
the same time, in “a world awash in change”, with regional, state and other territorial
security (actual physical security) at stake constantly given various attacks and pecking
at things, etc. In addition to this, there are risks affecting global society and global
markets of the socio – economic and especially of the economic and business nature that
are greatly under – appreciated and underestimated. With all the industrial and post –
industrial, and completely redeeming, because these benefit most people, profiting and
prosperity in this world of increasingly greater networked globalization, the politics given
the acts of terror and the war on terror are many times completely again contrary to the
aspirations of economic and society’s success, North, West, East and South.
The nature of democracy in the West is to engage the world as a unifier, to allow for
better educated and informed hearts and minds and to enhance the nature of democracy
in the view of the overall public, and this by exemplary successes and efforts at
freedoms, responsibilities, rights, business and commerce, foreign policy and other areas
of administration including meeting the challenges of terrorism, nuclear security and so
on : All this part of the virtuous circle of a global strategy that considers as many
constructive interests and policies, opinions and parties as can be. The idea in this
methodology is to allow again for more and greater global invention, innovation, business
and economic modeling, growth policy or policies and global economic and political
growth and success. This overall set of concepts for which there is no small pool of
definitions is now in new territory that Mr. Shultz aptly and in amicable and collegial ways
describes as having been around, in one form or another, since the 1980’s. There are,
therefore, precedents to any application an administration or government might apply to
dilemmas as, e.g., the war on drugs, nuclear security, terrorism, sustainability, the ups
and downs of economic growth and so on.
The scope of these various challenges, innumerable as they are, and provoking crisis
upon crisis, elevates the status of Mr. Shultz to political and administrative sainthood.
This is especially true in his role as unifier and catalyst for overcoming problems in the
time of the Reagan presidency, again especially, though by that time the author had
served for decades in business and government and directly in cabinet offices for two or
three preceding chief executives. Due mostly to the work of the author of this text, who
will state in self – effacing fact patterns one after the other, though not as an apology; the
Americans today in the eyes of the world have the perception as problem – solvers and
more in academics, business and government. In this information age, in addition to all
that, with all the various grouped and at the same time atomized and sliced and diced
details, given even Shultz’ knowledge of computers and their possibilities that dates back
many years, the text calls for a new understanding and interpretation of important events,
groups, international trends, and policy and politics. It was one thing to read through the
text as illustrative of these items and more, but another thing to read through again to
observe the different levels of analysis and interpretation as presented to define the ever
now engaged and engaging role of Americans in the areas of academics, the sciences,
business, administration, foreign policy, demographics, the challenges of terror, nuclear
security, various other problems such as drugs and addiction, social and society issues at
the same time : A worthy guide to the next global era.
A Work Un – finished : al – Qaeda and the World.
Thursday, September 14, 2017
ANATOMY OF TERROR : From the Death of Bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State,
by Ali Soufan (2017, Norton Publishers.)
In the world of terrorists and terrorism, Mr. Soufan makes the point to begin with, in his
intensely journalistic prose throughout, here in his text that to the involved friends and
enemies alike, in conflicted even violent opposition to each other, it is who you know. Mr.
Soufan makes the further point that friends do help, even to recognize the silent heroism
of people like John O’Neill, a well – known personality in New York in 2001, who died
while trying to rescue innocent victims from the Trade Center towers attack on September
11 of that year. The text here shows an intertwining of the stories of people like Mr.
O’Neill and those of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al – Zawahiri, and their associates,
and the book is full of such vignette narratives; enough to allow for the common – sense
view of the war on terror, that the savagery of terrorism and its victims should be
prevented, corrected and with the forces necessary that are properly and rightly used by
the military, policy makers and so on. The various values and priorities, Islamic
movements and parties to al – Qaeda at the same time their leader, bin Laden who died
in a raid on his home in 2011, continue as a danger to the West and Western society
insofar as same are allowed to churn the ancient and distorted memories of and within
radical arab society itself in calling radicals to action, and to make death, especially
violent death, a spectacle and an object lesson for the victims and onlookers of these
“spectacles”. The West is full of “infidels” and “apostates” disregarding the importance,
the religiosity and the hazards and danger of the current conflicts with extremist Islam
and the place of the Middle East and Africa that have cost everyone so much
economically and otherwise over the past generation – as much is the view in a
fundamental sense of even low – level al – Qaeda personnel, operatives and
sympathizers and why these parties make for terror everywhere along the human scale
of fear and destruction as they do. The grotesque, gruesome and burdensome business
of war in the Middle East, especially those in Iraq and Afghanistan through 2012 – 2014,
and then the pitched battles involving ISIS not only suffered and suffer from conflicted
and opposing politics from an interior on both sides, but as well from lacking any present
and clear strategy on the part of insurgents and al – Qaeda and its associates and
followers, even ideologically, apart from the goal and purpose of destruction of the fabric
of history and society writ large; and that means the territory of the Americas as an evil
enemy among others (see rhetoric); and this in the name of delivering a political and
moral message to populaces in the West who contribute greatly to the commonweal
internationally, though that have been adversely judged, e.g., by bin Laden and al –
Zawahiri and their friends in a circle that intrigues but destroys everything within its reach.
This destruction includes apparently as well any individuals within their grasp whom are
encountered and who decide against following al – Qaeda and the like – refusal to follow
has been an apparent justification within the world of Islam to eliminate people and to
destroy, and this purposely, more lives and more property.
Francis Fukuyama, part of whose present work has to do with enhancing and promoting
democratic principles and the rule of law everywhere, is cited in the text given his (at the
time) very awaited and valuably read and interpreted political science text, The THE END
OF HISTORY, that predicted from one end of the text itself to the next, including in the
footnotes, probably, that with the events of 1989 – 1991 in Eastern Europe and the Far
East, the world had changed its traditional view of the way the historical record would
materialize overall, and this would provoke in the future different chaos of different
proportions. This text by Soufan answers part of the question(s) invited by Mr.
Fukuyama’s thesis, and while things take place mostly in South Asia and that sub –
continent in his story, the narrative has great, great background that refers to Soviet
Afghanistan during the 1980’s and then the al – Qaeda of Waziristan and thereafter other
places. There is a connection between, mention here, the Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan
of 2001 forward with references to Kuwait, Soviet Afghanistan, the states neighboring
Afghanistan and Iraq going back some years that provokes and then entails the rapid
growth of al – Qaeda through the attack on the NY Trade Center and ensuing declaration
of war by the U.S., the bombing of al – Qaeda even in the Tora Bora caves and then the
Allied ground forces taking back of Afghan territory from the Taliban that followed. Then
other events as well, in parallel and subsequent to 9 / 11. With regard to this, present
author proposes and given the subtext in this book by Soufan, the assassination of the
Northern Alliance general Massoud in 2001, apparently, was a huge pathmark that led to
the fear and destruction from the worldwide al – Qaeda threat. Comments always invited,
though one must ponder the timing of Massoud’s death with the World Trade Center
attack and that the Northern Alliance, at least Massoud’s part of it, held the Taliban and al
– Qaeda in check from their wild and unruly terrorist acts that came later, and while
allowing for the eyes of the world to turn to this part of the globe at the time. Not to attend
to things for sake of public opinion, but for attention and help, remediation, new policies
and overall improvement of people’s lives. This was apparently not enough to assuage
the intentions of bin – Laden’s band of criminals in their commissions some weeks after
Massoud’s passing, and thereafter. This and other valuable and very captivating clauses,
images and stories are in this text and without the dramatic tone and flourishing style of a
novel; a great read.
A Work Un – finished : al – Qaeda and the World.

Thursday, September 14, 2017
Source: A Work Un – finished : al – Qaeda and the World.
By Gloria Davies, a Book on Routine Hostility and

Literature.
REVOLUTIONARY LITERATURE.
Lu Xun’s Revolution : Writing in a Time of Violence, by Gloria Davies (2013, Harvard

University Press.)
It does appear that if there is an influential writer in Chinese literature from the 20 th
century revolutionary period, and this apart from Guo Mo ruo as the emeritus of the
intelligentsia in literature and political culture and philosophy of the era, there is Lu Xun
from Shaoxing (Zhejiang province). The simple chronology of this writer’s life is greatly
interesting starting in about 1905 when he started to become known as a man of letters,
articles and essays. Lu Xun was a revolutionary in revolutionary times in China, and was
friend enough with most in the intelligentsia and writing communities there to head up a
number of intellectual leagues and movements for journalists, essaysits, and so on.
The overall theme in Lu Xun’s writing, whether in the “guwen” (ancient script), “wenyan”
(traditional script), or the “baihua” (modern language), all three of which he knew well, he
favored and wrote artfully and with subtle rigor in the “bai hua”. The “wenyan”, language
of the old elite and of classical scholarship, Lu Xun discouraged as inegalitarian, obscure,
and decrepit; and with other disadvantages including the fervor over “baihua” in China at
the time. He wrote almost explicitly in baihua throughout his three decades career in
Chinese literature. When the question came up as well, Lu Xun favored the romanization
of Chinese at the same time as disseminating the baihua through his literature. He also
had morbid and patently gruesome and macabre themes, again eloquently stylist and
fancifully composed, throughout most of his writing over that time. It was in the day that
anyone detracting from Lu Xun’s questions, ideas or writings became fodder for
censorship, rebuking, and even elimination by Chairman Mao. Lu Xun was out to make
baihua the literary currency of the intelligentsia, and to promote his style and form of
writing as literature for the Chinese populace.
Mao Zedong admired the literature of Lu Xun, probably not because he could understand
it, but mostly due to its political vigor and rigor, the spirit and personalization of the
author’s narratives, the judgment of the author that affect in clear light inspires proper
insight, the role of his literature in reaction to the possibility of total Nationalist rule over
China; and as a renewed literary orthodoxy that would be marked by Mao’s regime in
addition to the trend in popularity that Lu Xun lived in during the 1910’s through his death
in China in October 1936. Throughout his life, and despite his wherewithal that would
have him living anywhere he chose, really, Lu Xun chose to live in the Shang hai area of
southern China, even while taking an occasional leave for Beijing during his writing
career.
As with any state – sponsored writer under such regimes as P.R.C. at the time, the author
suffered from great and greater criticisms as he got older, sometimes hateful ones that
cited his rivals. He was also compelled to occasionally write very weak columns in
recognition of his political gaffes and infractions and transgressions. He had read Marx in
Japanese, and while Marx in Japanese might be difficult to decipher, the autocritique is
on every page of his work, as is Hegelian conflict and just plain emotional vapidity and
depression as well. THE STORY OF AH Q as a major work of Lu Xun, represents an
apogee of internal popularity of literature by him in China at the time. Ah Q as a novel is
violent, characterized by death, it has the character of “petty bourgeois” the Chinese so
detest, is aberrant in its illustration of different but necessary questions in the novel, and
more. Lu Xun believed in his later years that working mostly at night was better for any
literature he published, plus with his smoking, a feeling by the author that night was a
new orthodoxy about literature and the arts; that working at night allowed for better
literary insight; and given the “Lu Xun spirit” of the time along with his reaction to
Nationalist Party rule, again, at the time. This biography also cites the influence of the
author here in assuring the completion of the Northern Expedition of the People’s Army,
and the complex and complicated politics at the home of Sun Yat – sen (China) that led
to his demise over a cancer attack in the mid – 1920’s. Lu Xun also treated his language,
sometimes highly poetic, in as informal a way as possible in order to invite the experience
of language for his readers. He was fundamentally a polemicist, a humanist, and devised
in the literature different hints as to dealing with questions of life given one’s insight and
illuminated and observable spirit in the printed word. Great read.
By Gloria Davies, a Book on Routine Hostility and

Literature.
Source: By Gloria Davies, a Book on Routine Hostility and Literature.
More Than a Single Holocaust.

Saturday, September 23, 2017
FROM “BECAUSE I COULD … “ TO “BECAUSE THERE IS A WAY … “
BY DANIEL JONAH GOLDHAGEN (2009, PUBLIC AFFAIRS BOOKS), Worse Than War
: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity. Also a motion picture.
This very detailed text is a great book to read to inform and catch up individually on most
human rights violations during the last half of the 20 th century into the 21 st. More than
just a compilation of facts and fact patterns about atrocities and armed conflict, and this in
detail enough to fill a volume on its own with valid and verifiable historical accounts, this
text by Jonah Goldhagen allows for a building up of the structure of atrocities in various
geographical areas, not by type nor by taxonomy that gloss over the mortal gravity of
such things, but in the use of terms that are innovative and that anyone with a tenth –
grade reading average can digest, comprehend, and internalize in view of present and
future stories of the same nature as in the text. The headlines of the book include
reasons or motivation for assassination and / or elimination, genocide of innocents having
to do with politics and political, policy developments in the regions in which these occur,
the opportunity and motivation to inflict mortal harm, and the different methods used in
perpetrating the crimes against humanity so – described. The book begins readily with an
act of war described by some as an atrocity in the atomic bombing of Japanese cities in
1945. This in and of itself in the thousands of people eliminated within seconds of the
atomic blasts over Hiroshima and Nagasaki constitutes for the book author as a basis for
the genocidal acts of many parties and military and paramilitary groups since then.
Surprisingly, the text does not mention the Palestinians vey much in his narrative, nor
much of the Kurds, nor much about the history in China of internal atrocities including in
modern and post – modern history with for example the civil – war battles of the Taipings.
The text additionally goes into topics such as the Belgian Congo, North Korea and its
camps and prisons, Japanese human experimentation in China along with the attacks on
Nanjing and neighboring cities before WWII; the Mau Mau and Kikuyu of Kenya; the
genocides and homicides of Saddam Hussein and his quasi – successor bin Laden; the
declaration of acts of jihad and the bombing of the New York World Trade Center, South
Africa’s apartheid; anti – Semitism in Europe; Cambodia under the despotic and deadly
Khmer Rouge; the clandestine acts of the organs of the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War;
internecine strife in Nigeria; the attitude and attacks of the Hutus on the Tutsi population
in Rwanda / Burundi; the meaningless elimination of two million or more Armenians in the
1914 massacre there; and Serbs versus Croats in the Yugoslav war during the 1990’s.
A modern approach of some to the book’s ‘value proposition’, once to their attention in
their midst, is of various origins and eliminationisms that are possibly the campaigns of
mass – murderers, partially mass – murder regimes and partially those of the applicable
individual and group perpetrator – gangsters. Trouble spots again, given this, are among
others : Europe, Nigeria, Rwanda – Burundi; and Armenia. A modern approach in reading
through it that I did not take when originally purchasing this edition of this text has to do
with feedback from the reader – used by process who in this case is going to be better off
given that lots of people are into Hollywood and things like the UN Security Council, at
least this in many well – know areas. The “Fortress America” that we all see or
experience from our desks or chairs, cancels out the banality of some evil and nefarious
characters in support of the story and analyses from America of faraway starvation,
shooting, marches, death camps, gassing, and more.
Apart from any consultative or mechanical assistance in the text, the narrative presents
commonalities first in : perceptions of the charismatics who lead the leaders and their
retinue first into the destruction of property and other goods, then into the destruction of
people; then to apparently global destruction on a mass scale. This involves importantly a
conceptual systemization given first the atomized situation of elimination and later an
institutional (postulated) approach involving approaching the propositions of “collective”
and “legal” guilt concerning atrocities : the analytical field used to illustrate these is multi –
factor and on ideological steroids, further systemization and bureaucratization of
genocide in a target city or region; and the detection of possible additional genocide
given a view of the experience of combattants whether bystanders or perpetrators. No
matter the climate, U.S. military and other forces according to region observe the primacy
of other defensive and takeover alternatives. There are levels of analysis free to examine
the “how” of different genocides; the politics and ‘final solution’ of these and related
parties and their acts and actions; legislative or consensus legal administration, the fight
against “demons’, but what of the genocide that calls for looking at morality of the act by
offenders as an analytical tool, and expediency of the genocide against and in view of
each person, offender, bystander, victim, … , also? Further examination in the text has to
do with attitudes and mindsets; the future of this kind of terrorism; Islam and infidels /
unbelievers; non – state terror consumers and producers. The most the author really has
the reader doing is entering into more meetings of the nature here to analyze and
evaluate, especially those with moral forces; and those concentrating on three secular
imperatives : prevention, intervention, and justice. Actually, the shock of the Holocaust
has world citizens keeping the watch over the modern state, especially again during
power changes; and the called – for as well entity level analysis of the multi – level war
defending humanity that will be led by democratic nations speaking out against the racist
and fratricide enemy (those who qualify) and related genocide, race and hate crimes; and
the motivation as well of offenders and offending offices in simple steps of international
prevention, intervention and punishment.
Peace of the Prophets — of Love and Necessity,

and the Wo...
Thursday, October 05, 2017
NO ROOM FOR SMALL DREAMS, BY SHIMON PERES (2017, HARPER COLLINS.)
Perhaps additionally as the greatly longitudinal legacy of David Ben – Gurion, we have
this fantastic though too short in content memoire by his disciplined pupil Shimon Peres.
An informal autobiography having to do with one of the original founders of the state of
Israel, this text cover to cover is just as interesting and captivating as a text by Robert
Service about Lenin or by William Manchester about Winston Churchill. Why this claim?
Shimon Peres, as a founding member of the family of modern Israel is memorable for his,
at first, and his friends, very friendly efforts to have the U.K. leave Palestine in allowing
the Hebrews to pursue Zionism, sovereignty and state autonomy. This was made
possible in part by the original 1917 Balfour Declaration and then partially rescinded later
in a devious but hidden 1939 “White Paper” published by the British sometime later. The
Balfour Declaration led the way to Israel’s legitimacy and the “White Paper” attempted to
confiscate it. The Hebrew populace of the time was nonetheless more attentive to
Zionism and not to U.K. jealousies of sorts over having to leave Palestine, lock, stock and
barrel, and militarily as well by the 1948’s.
Some Israelis did find places in the WWII British Army as Holocaust survivors and
refugees, and from this crowd emerged such political talents as Golda Meir, Arye Balior
and Moshe Dayan and still others. World War II and its subsequent years are where the
great David Ben – Gurion comes in as a founder of Israel, a man of great knowledge,
integrity and wisdom, wily and intelligent, a power – base political person all the way, who
remained somewhat in the background while his younger counterparts did the work of
establishing Israel and fighting the wars of independence, and the others that came when
Israel became vulnerable to attack from the Arab States. As a founder of the Haganah,
the underground Jewish army, Ben – Gurion proved a great strategist, tactician and the
later administrator and politician in the new state of Israel, as well as the original
organizer of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) that are so prominent today in people’s
minds, those who follow events in the Middle East. Opposed bitterly by many Arabs and
the Arab collectivity, U.N. Resolution 181 that established in May 1948 a homeland for
the Hebrew people was and is the answer to over 2000 years of exile from its home for
the Hebrew people. The Arabs saw this coming and the seeds for the war of
independence were sown and foreseen by Ben – Gurion and Peres and their crowd in
1947 as these people predicted a bitter, ongoing war with the Arab states, a ‘war of
platoons’ unlike any other type of war before it. This type of, again, war of platoons
foresaw the type of war on terror the Israelis fought in the Six – Day War, the Yom Kippur
War, and today’s war on terror much as the U.S. and its coalition continue everywhere in
militarized and paramilitary conflict areas. The passage by significant majority and
implementation of Resolution 181 and the emigration of Jews to Palestine after WWII, the
establishment of the state of Israel as a homeland for Jews, and the Tel Aviv ceremonies
for the Israeli elite at the time greatly angered the Arab polity and invited violent and
racially and emotionally charged promises from the local Arab populations that Israel
would be destroyed. The British had left by midnight on May 14, 1948 and the contest of
readiness for the war of independence between Arabs and Jews ensued. The U.K. no
longer controlled any of the Middle East borders, and the violent Arab reaction might
have had more to do with the Brits’ departure and relative weakness of the Haganah and
other Israeli military units than anything having to do with jihad, though this is speculation.
Jews returned to Israel from Mediterranean Europe and Western Europe everywhere.
The Jews in Eastern Europe were held back due to overnationalistic politics in Eastern
Europe and the USSR after the war, though some did make it through to Israel via ties in
Central Europe and then to Tel Aviv, mostly by boat.
On the 15 th of May 1948, the nations of Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq formed an attack on the
nation of Israel and the Israelis fought back : As would be the case today, many dead and
many, many refugees were made by this conflict, though by early 1949 the Arabs were
on the defensive and the last to surrender, Syria, gave up fighting in July 1949. For Israel,
Ben – Gurion, Peres and their followers, this conflict was a war of destiny. Peres also
began his career processing dispatches for Ben – Gurion, no small task. Since David Ben
– Gurion was political and for other reasons, the Peres family with one child and another
on the way began a station in Israeli life and politics by traveling after the independence
war to New York, and for academic, political and diplomatic and countless other
adventures. Israel had won the recent war against the Arabs against all odds, and was
terribly short of modern arms, including in need of a proper air force that Peres
subsequently developed starting with Al Schwimmer and pilots such as Roy Kurtz. How
do you develop a good, defensive and offensive (if needed) air force for a country that
has food and other shortages and great poverty as Israel did at the time? Peres knew the
intrus for this as well and carried out Ben – Gurion’s edicts and missions carefully yet
speedily and with acumen and all the while facing Arab threats on the destruction of
Israel. Of particular interest in this theme at the time was the hardened soviet client
Egypt, under Nasser who vowed repeatedly to destroy his Hebrew neighbor to the North.
Yes, Peres talks handsomely and effusively about others, and other elements, good and
bad, the founders, the villains and public figures, heroes and puppets that established
Israel in his time up to 2016 when the text was completed a few days before his death.
Should one choose to read this text, read with attention, take breaks, read word – for –
word, as the narrative is full of details, literal and between the lines, and is a who’s who of
modern Israel today. No chapter nor prolix, as there might be in such texts as boilerplate,
section on the cold war. This made the book more narrow in focus, more detailed on the
side of the country, and greatly more interesting in its Middle East, local viewpoint and
approaches to events and levels of analysis. Great!
Modern Media Computing : Music and the Like to

Eyes and Ears (Empi...
Saturday, October 14, 2017
THE ATTENTION MERCHANTS, by Tim Wu (2016, Knopf Publishers)
This book is an answer to many questions, including a naming of “who’s who” in

technology over the past twenty years, and at the same time brings to the proverbial table
a variety of perceptions about technology and the media and its propensity to invite great
trust on the one hand and / or great alienation on the other. Jean – Philippe Desbordes,
in 2007, along the same lines in 2007, had published in France a monograph along the
same lines with the premise that the medias alienated and distorted the life’s experience
of those audiences to its various forms, especially children and trusting parties (the book
was entitled MON ENFANT N’EST PAS UN COEUR DE CIBLE; Wu himself cites other
texts such as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, The Man Nobody Knows (1923,) by Bruce
Barton, The Hidden Persuaders (McDonald, 1957), and still others such as Life after
Television (G. Gilder, 2007)). The overall premise of the book is by its nature the modern
media is so complex and influential in its presentation, again especially to and
fundamentally in governing the lives of the young that it cannot be trusted, even for basic
presentation in its various forms, again especially concerning the visual and video / film
arts.
The message of the Wu text is somewhat more tepid, though again basically along the
same lines as the Desbordes idea – the media cannot be trusted, probably starting with
its inception with the inclusion of some hard copy advertisements in the newspapers in
New York in the late 1800’s. Wu nonetheless portrays those behind “harvesting” – a way
of capturing and using human attention – as constructive in many ways and created and
continued by many well – meaning and ambitious, constructive – minded people. This
begins again with the including of newspaper ads, a great innovation, by the “New York
Sun” as founded by Benjamin Day in the late 19 th century. The idea of harvesting was
originated apparently by Claude C. Hopkins, again in New York, as a way to capture and
use human attention but with the most Catholic (and Methodist) of reasons and practices
: As a way of taking constructive advantage and use of basic literacy and literary
awareness and with Godly thoughts; in fact a sort of praying to the image and
impressions of things if one will. Though the invention of technical approaches to
advertising dates back a while, so does the use of these techniques in the confidence
game of which Clark Stanley and the late 1800’s fads for different types of snake oils and
related liniments. Claude Hopkins joined in the frenzy of the day led by Stanley for mail
order liniments based on snake oils (as formally introduced and very successfully at the
1893 New York World’s Fair); whereas many of these medicines as same were called,
turned out to be ordinary poison.
The media history that Timothy Wu weaves in this book has more to do with his research
and findings into various historical media figures, even from as improbable professional
areas as they were – the military of U.K. Lord Kitchener, the WWI propaganda machine of
Woodrow Wilson, the original societal role and influence of Freudian psychology, and the
various human personalities behind these different influences and levels of analysis :
George Creel, again Claude Hopkins, Walter Lippmann of the ‘New Republic’, Theodore
McManus, and still many others in the beginning and these masters of the “harvest” or
power of suggestion succeeded by more and more sophisticated methods and media
people including even B.F. Skinner; T. Leary and M. Mcluhan, Richard Alpert, etc.;
Jonathan Robbin and Steven Case, all the way up to the media pioneers of today. Not
the actors, but the producers and business people of the content that includes the bevy of
actors to whom another set of media – influenced individuals aspires. The text at hand
also condemns the extreme cases of plain and simple demagogues such as William
Jennings Bryan, and even more extreme in the situation of Hitler and the Republic of
German under the Nazis.
The former subject matter and more, all greatly documented with annotations and stories,
anecdotes and narrative vignettes that are completely worthwhile traversing into the
present world of the media, legacy of modern computing models that included Prodigy /
AOL, Commodore, Magnavox, Zenith, and their leading personalities that included
people Wu calls “the invaders” of the States. It is not improbable, nor outside the world of
suggestion and psychological influence these businesses, essentially, and their leading
personalities again lead to Apple, Facebook and Google. Microsoft also plays a role of a
terrific software company, complex and with its own win, lose or draw – type computing /
media model of which the Windows – based media, Microsoft NBC, and with its own
sensations and celebrities. Also, whereas the original suggestion – based adverts had
been formalized and very thoroughly worked – out photocopy in newspapers and
magazines, and still is; the media today depends much more on the mouse – clicks of the
internet, “going viral”, blogging and various feeds including video feeds, streaming and
the like; and this all with neurasthenic homeostasis of Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook /
Instagram in a dominant social media sector where to be different is greatly to be better –
and much of this appear to be dominated by Apple Computer, uber alles, due to the multi
– faceted and multi – functionality of its OS, probably. Wu encourages everyone within
the scope of the media, the internet, and his analysis of these and more : Hardware,
operating systems, software and applications, and the various personalities behind these,
to continue creating and dreaming of the future possibilities for communications and the
human reclamation of technology despite the obvious productivity gains of personal
computing and the bargain in the utility and / or utilities of the same. This theme that runs
through the entire book has one in the technology, entertainment, design paradigm and in
the actual computing is that regardless of one’s scale (e.g., database all the way up
through data cloud) that one’s technology environment should feature everything from
healthy skepticism to outright denial and mistrust according to its various elements as
presented, and with specific respect to media content, past, present and future.
Modern Media Computing : Music and the Like to

Eyes and Ears (Empir...
Saturday, October 14, 2017
Source: Modern Media Computing : Music and the Like to Eyes and Ears (Empire of the
Senses, … )
Innovation, Creativity, AI, … .

Book by the Noteworthy.
THE SECOND MACHINE AGE, by Erik Brynjolffson and Andrew Mcafee (W.W. Norton,
2014.) See also : www.secondmachineage.com
It is interesting that books about technology are always around for a while and then
typically are relegated to shelves in libraries, though I got a recent recommendation,
source un – remembered but it might be written down somewhere, to read through this
text that stops in 2014, before AirBnB and Uber, for example, but that contains many
what are now classic technological models, innumerable, many, that help us to regulate
and conduct our lives in the West. The thesis of the text is not for the faint of heart as it
notes the overall primacy of customized and tailored technologies in the West whereas
the East has a different technological paradigm for business and for the end – user. The
really big technology topics that comprise the tech “chessboard” through 2014 included
(still) some classic hard and softcover books such as those by J.M. Keynes, V. Leontief,
L. Pauling, J.A. Schumpeter and the like on macroeconomics (the great text by Paul
Samuelson omitted), and this along with other literature by K. Jaspers, Voltaire, M.
Poliyani, even E. Hemingway ( The Sun Also Rises). The machines the text illustrates
and talks about are shown using various references, from journalistic to research sites, to
government sites, to the blogosphere, Yahoo!, economics and business sites, the 1912
Sears Catalog, media sites like YouTube.com, CNBC.com, huffingtonpost.com and so
on.
The innumerable technologies that innovate our lives and our conduct, making us more
productive and more creative, less “organized” and “conforming” include the prophecies
of I. Asimov and A.C. Clarke (remember the difference between technology and magic),
some of the Microsoft software products for Xbox, Cisco Systems, IBM Watson AI
functionality, Smartphones and iPhones (anew sometimes every few weeks), the
gigantesque WalMart hypermarket, the innovations of the federal reserve system, various
technology institutes including the Upjohn Institute, the predictions of Albert Gore ( The
Future Six Drivers of Global Change), the greater and greater uses of the wikis including
Wikipedia, the varied and sundry, innumerable themselves – SMS services; Facebook,
innovations and inventions in digital photography, Google, the innovating internet sites of
newspapers, Forbes.com, census.gov; Garry Kasparov, the Saint Louis Fed, the Stuxnet
virus, and numerous, many, many educational and business, economics and gaming
sites : Too many to name in all (apologies).
All this calls for more and more and faster and faster computing. Check out the book’s
supercomputer sites including riken.jp; intel.com; green500.org; ed-thelen.org; and
Akamai.com – some people are more familiar with the technology scheme here than
others, and remember it all is still hardware and software. I picked up this book due to the
recent discussion everywhere about advances in artificial intelligence and computing
advances at the same time. When I first heard about artificial intelligence, actually during
the late 1960’s and its technologies – then mostly possibilities, potentialities and with
some promise, especially concerning hardware – artificial smarts were just about circuitry
and processing speed. Then fast forward to the “second machine age”, the age of smart
everything, including many, ever so many processes involving the interaction and
adaptation of hardware and software in machines and computing, and this includes
calculations, etc., where human intelligence, the memory and problem solving parts of it,
are easily broken down and while still creative and innovative winners, are left far in the
back distances by computing devices and technology models that have become
everyday, routine for the consumer and even boring for the engineer who was inspired by
them (when this book was published) less than four years ago. This shows the limitations
of computing – of which there really are not any, none, and the infinite possibilities that
one considers when starting in on the items above and related goods, services, virtual or
tangible, and the like. The quality of these and the innovation has a cost that has really
yet to be assessed, and this is so difficult given the social and other intangible benefits of
social media, add Twitter and Instagram and so on, and efforts of policy – makers to
better stratify personal income, not as social policy nor as vote – getting, but as a sound
way too continue to get beyond the economic models of 1870 – 1929. Concerning these
items, maybe consider Michael Spence’s book The Next Convergence, or Why the West
Rules, by Ian Morris. The number of books on the topic are themselves innumerable and
everyone has a favorite. Remember the text here is macroeconomic in its scope and
looks at business, economy, innovation, creativity, invention and so on from the age old
perspective of classical economics as started by Adam Smith. The text itself is wondrous
in its repeated mentioning of Watson, Nike, webification of different things, Google,
China, politics and policy in the States related to all this, and for a four year – old book,
just about, that is quite good these days; not an instabook. It goes from there the many
levels and facets in the analysis of the text about technology and its merits, its burdens,
all in the various industrial and sectoral economics, commercial and business models that
are picked up by the Wall Street mavens and traded, turned upside down, and so on. It is
interesting that economics and business has emerged from the twentieth century, and
this a central idea in this narrative, as a system, open and growing, still and a far cry from
the horse trader wiseguys of the old exchanges and marketplaces. There might be
vestiges of these in some places, the places where bargain – hunters meet with
dealmakers even for small purchases such as at public squares on Saturday, and this is
charming though the book really eschews discussing this in favor of the bounty made in a
streamlined and digitized marketplace where the asymmetries, whereas person to person
there are many, in the GDP we have today, actually few.
Innovation, Creativity, AI, … .

Source: Innovation, Creativity, AI, … .
Symmetry in Nature — Soviet Nuclear Weapons

and the 20th ...
Friday, November 24, 2017
STALIN AND THE BOMB: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939 – 1956, by David
Holloway (Yale University Press, 1994)
To compare texts, though narrator here is not regularly in that business, the only text I
have read that is in parallel with this one in the quality of review of the soviet nuclear
science program is the memoir of Andres Sakharov published in 1990 (Knopf). In reading
about this topic as illustrated by Mr. Holloway, a very credible university faculty member
in addition to research and writing for this book, one learns of the time – tested, though
now defunct policy of soviet planning for the bomb and for its nuclear program. This
program, though it supposedly stood on its own, changed history and changed twentieth
century political and administrative policy definitively in important territories such as the
U.S., U.K., France, China, and of course those countries attempting to develop and / or
obtain nuclear weapons since the soviet nukes program began in the late 1940’s,
officially starting in 1944 with the establishment by Stalin himself of a U.S.S.R. nuclear
weapons bureau. The start of the physics effort for the soviet nuclear weapons, or
nuclear ordnance did begin before that – during the interwar period when war with
Germany yet again began to haunt policymakers given the Versailles Treaty.
In addition to Sakharov, who actually came along later in to the soviet nuclear weapons
program, not given to anything but the era and his development as a scientist; the cast of
characters for the development project or projects with the goal of a soviet uranium and
then hydrogen bombs rested on the shoulders (Theoretical Physics) Igor Tamm, a
comrade Kurchatov and a minimum of his supervisory and associated colleagues
followed by a myriad of scientist – party members. This soviet program was officially
overseen by Lavrenti Beria, a Stalin crony and a crook who might have known very little
about physics much less nuclear physics given his daily agenda circulating in soviet
capitals picking people out for the GULAG, execution and if not that then various
activities as slaves – this took lots of his time, so he was not around the nuclear project
much and nonetheless reported to Stalin on the progress of these soviet scientific efforts.
Stalin was old, though he did live to see, yet not long enough to see all the pioneering
work of his nuclear people, the 1949 atomic blast at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan was developed additionally, and mostly after Stalin’s death into a nuclear
ICBM location and as the center for soviet space launches. This holds true even today
though Kazakhstan, again, is not on the territory of the Russian Federation, and Moscow
apparently pays a fee to launch its rockets from the former soviet sites that are ideal for
rocket launches. Imagine the finances of that, especially given these have really never
been made public.
The soviet nuclear bomb program is vital in the story of the development of nuclear
weapons given the role of Western science in this – many Western nuclear secrets were
taken out of U.K. when scientist Kurchatov visited there in the 1950’s and due also
especially to the spy work of Klaus Fuchs (Manhattan Project, Los Alamos) who
apparently literally presented U.S. nuclear blueprints to the soviets and that again took
the soviets themselves five years after the essentials of K. Fuchs work with them in
stealing nuclear content from the U.S. that was very detailed and very thoroughly
documented. This story again as others confirms for Western readers the patent activity
of spying by the soviets and their analogs in the areas of research and development in
science, technology and other domains. Mr. Holloway in authoring this definitive text
illustrates for the reader the original goal or goals of soviet nuclear weapons policy and its
nuclear science practices, the way politics, policy and scientific innovation interact in
totalitarian regimes such as the U.S.S.R., the heavily contentious policies of the soviets
against test bans and other international nuclear agreements of the 20th century; soviet
nuclear spying; and the ultimate failures of soviet science and innovation given the
nuclear arms race.
This text again presents an outstandingly detailed time line of soviet nuclear weapons
science, the relationship of science and innovation, invention and their relationship to
soviet politics and policy; the impact of soviet nuclear weapons development on soviet
politics to the exterior and international relations at the same time. The text does discuss,
though nuclear weapons development governs the tone of the narrative, the possibilities
of nuclear war as viewed by the soviets and the servility of science and innovation to
state policies in the U.S.S.R. that ended in 1991. This book is outstanding if from one
respect only and that is its multi – level systemic analysis of soviet nuclear policy. Great
read!
The Israel of Moshe Dayan.
Friday, December 15, 2017
Mitla Pass, by Leon Uris (1988, Doubleday Books)
This great novel starts out with the unscripted plans of the Israelis for the 1956 Sinai
Peninsula conflict with the Egyptian armies as supported by an air corps of volunteer
pilots, etc., from places like Poland and Czechoslovakia that were supposed to be good
proving grounds for MIG pilots and air crews. In the details of the plans for the Egyptian
attack is an Israeli occupation and then advance through the center of the Sinai ending
with a thirty – mile dangerous passage through enemy territory, and then the last 16 – 17
miles of it through Mitla Pass, a mountainous, craggy, jagged, and deserted passage to
the Suez, and all this trouble just before (in October 1956) the U.S. Presidential election
of the ticket of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. David Ben Gurion, the military and
de facto leader of Israel at the time, distrusts allied support and the Lion’s Battalion,
destined for Mitla Pass, are to be without air support for most of their campaign through
the dangerous territory and then the pass after parachuting in to the middle of the Sinai to
begin with as dropped by “Dakota” C – Transports flying first over the Negev Desert. The
paratrooping mission began on October 29, 1956 and the military and paramilitary forces
fought the Egyptians for four days with some British and French help. Of interest
throughout the plot are Gideon Zadok, his assistant Shlomo, Major Ben Asher, Operation
Commander Zecharaiah and then at the top, Ben Gurion himself. The plot of the text is
an atomized and detailed version of one part of the Sinai war of 1956.
While this is just another war book among many, many, even about the subject of the
Sinai Peninsula and its various conflicts, the author writes on more than several levels
having to do with preparations for the conflict overall, then the Mitla Pass predicament;
Zadok’s Hebrew heritage and family history over the world; the tone or mood of
romanticism in all Uris’ work on conflict; the setting and various themes of the Holy Land
and special and territorial knowledge of this other than just Tel Aviv / Jerusalem, the West
Bank and Gaza; then the character and overall model of Israel and Israeli people and
their lives and families and more.
The Lion’s Battalion is chosen to spearhead the military advance through to the Suez
after being paratroop dropped into Central Sinai (Operation Kadesh, so – called). While
the author narrates about the war, there are various chapters and vignettes throughout
focusing on the major characters of the book and about Zadok’s family and other pasts in
old Europe and the pogroms there, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, White Russia,
Czechoslovakia (Bratislava) starting in history in the late 19th century, then through the
first World War. The long – lost glory of some places, Vienna and Trieste, and others, is
also a focus of the narrative. This all serves as a backdrop to the 1956 war and mostly,
this time period is examined as it is when most Jewish emigration ‘against all odds’ took
place during and subsequent to anti – Jewish policies in places and related pogroms.
Again, Mitla Pass, a mountainous, treacherous, rocky, cliff – ridden part of the Sinai is
necessary to block off, to restrict the movement of Egyptian forces – their replacements,
actually – getting through the Sinai Desert.
The narrative of the text takes place through different characters and in different persons
from different areas of the world where Zadok and his family had been or originated from
or emigrated to, including the U.S. and Israel. Given the major characters listed above, at
least one chapter is devoted to each and to others, and to territories such as White
Russia and Ukraine, … . Other places of interest that are examined include Baltimore,
Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Israel of course; New York, Paris, Hong Kong, the
Caribbean. These memories, chiefly as illustrated to Zadok and Shlomo contribute to the
“resolution of fear” over this dangerous military mission that is just another part of the
Sinai battle at the time. The Egyptian MIGs strafe the Israeli troops, inflicting heavy
losses, and yet the concerns of the troops are for memorable times, kosher rations only,
that the main radio went out in the landing and of course, orders from Dayan that come
telling them to halt before entering the pass.
Zecharaiah eventually decides to send personnel to take the entire pass along its 16 – 17
– mile length to prevent the Egyptian offensive from further progressing. Allied military are
by then fighting against the Egyptians also in the same area when Zadok and his
followers volunteer for patrol in Mitla Pass and are allowed by their commander to
proceed. By this time the Allies have pulled back due to politics played in Moscow about
the Egyptians, yet Zadok’s patrol is well – equipped and has infantry armor. With tank
support and heavy casualties, the troops make it through the pass and enemy
reinforcements are cut off. This, by the way, marks the end of the Sinai conflict in the
book whereupon Zadok goes to rejoin friends and family, first in Cyprus and then Rome,
Italy. Again, kibbutz to kibbutz. A great read.
JOHN ROBERT FOWLES (d. 2005) : Humanism

as “Childism&amp...
The Tree, by John R. Fowles
THE TREE, BY JOHN ROBERT FOWLES (1979, 2010, Harper Collins Books)
In one of his last narratives before his passing in 2005, John Fowles, in addition to other
great and highly readable works starting with The Collector (1963), The French
Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), and then others since then, and still selling through the
current literary era of biographies and documentaries, published this small book first in
1979 about details and literary presentation and illustration, the art of language and the
possibilities for a “greener” England and a greener planet. That is quite much to include in
a text of only about 100 pages, though the cultural approach Fowles takes in this text,
and his examination of themes applying from a natural world onto that which is without
order, industrial, wasteful, polluting and the like shows this great illustrator an inveterate
and amateur purveyor of difficult messages such as the presence of nature in all we do
and our obligations and imperatives to uphold this, outside any myths from the town and
country contrasts people make, in viewing even the thought of nature itself today not as a
clipped and manicured, managed and mapped – out surrounding, but in many cases an
image, a thought a cause without audience and taken much for granted.
Fowles chooses the wood, the forest, as his point of metaphorical analysis of the
dilemmas of the role of nature as illuminated by the media and by various other sources
including photos and so forth we take and that our neighbors take or procure at the same
time. While the wood, today, is structured and mapped in all appearances, it remains for
Fowles in the domain of un – capturability as framed by the camera to reproduce the
reality of the wood and the tree that cannot be framed, really, and that remains in fact wild
before the eyes of interlocutors, watchers, and even curious and otherwise disinterested
people. The chance of survival of the wood in all its, again, un – capturability and
sustainability if so, is the explore – ability of the wood and the cause and meaning,
significance and experiences of those looking and walking into and through the wood that
looks back through its images, sites and sounds, textures of different facets of these
images and all living and capturable with camera and lens. The accessibility of the wood
is another great, great feature of the ability of all of us to walk into and through and to
have a communicative dialogue with the wood by our presence and what we do there,
however observable, structured, simple – as in a walk – and that is a living and
memorable experience no matter its mundane character nor what we capture while there
nor remember later. This un – prosodic conversation with the wood that Fowles illustrates
presents in its cause metaphorical imagery and language, and at the same time the idea
and philosophy if possible of the undocumented and un – capturable surrounding and
environment of the wood once in it.
The author as well contrasts in this essay, as the book is almost a pamphlet recognizing
different scientific themes while claiming axiomatically the primacy of art and how science
is a domain of details and cause and effect as really managed using the arts (this image
is metaphorical and ideological in and of itself); the wood as compared to the farm, a
small one, on which he grew up, and the fix – up 30 – acre plot he purchased as an adult.
By this presentation, on the one hand the wood that represents nature and the home plot
and later farm the stand for a managed gardening of things, Fowles, with great literary
skill presents an overall paradox to all this, already mentioned here, of the metaphorical
approach to the wood itself and us as living people in it, however transient this might be;
and the overall and ephemeral and un – capturable character of the place for the time we
are in it and for the rest of the life of the wood. Though the gardener in all of us barely
interferes with the natural progression and life of the wood, s / he interferes all the same
and gives cause to contrast with those recognizing nature’s overall preponderance
without attempting to touch nor interfere with it, even in a small way through interaction,
even, at the local wood or woods.
The complexities of the text ensue once this metaphorical vs. un – capturable paradox is
set on the table of dialogue between author and reader as between the reader of sorts or
the person – catalyst and the dialogue and communication with nature “as if” in or
through the wood. Much currency is spent on illustrating the author’s relations with family
provoked by this paradox, and of the Swedish taxonomist and naturalist Carl Linnaeus
who attempted to name the species, all of them, that he searched for, encountered and
researched over his life during the 19 th century. As if this were not cause enough yet to
derail ourselves from this narrative, the author plunges into the examination of various
“truths” about his levels of analysis of the wood, even presenting the satanic as a
companion and “manager”, essentially of god’s universe. What does this point to?
Directly from the reading and given the bent of post – modern ideas entertained in this
short but critical voyage for anyone among us who cares about responsibility, choice,
preserving nature and our approaches and relations themselves with loved ones, the
author presents again the loneliness, if not “aloneness”, of each of all of us in our
trajectory through metaphor and un – capturability, from our upbringing through adult life
to the end, detail after precious detail, again through adventures, experiences, events,
tides of emotions and the like. In situ, once in this wood and calmly, uneventfully walking
through or carrying on as one would in various activities or modes, we are confined to the
maintained yet wild structure of the wood and the medicinal quality of our trajectory
through it as a possible escape from weariness and boredom among other things. This
has had a heavy impact on me and probably on anyone else who has been in Boulogne,
the Ardennes, or any of the sculptured and yet open and wild gardens of places like
Tsarskoe Selo or public gardens in Munich, even the Yellowstone Park woods where I
waited for a ride for five hours in the middle of one night, or yet the Busch Gardens with
that sort of decorative presentation of nature and its gardening. The implications of the
text here are lives – and life – preserving and saving by choice, in this sweet and highly
readable and metaphorical, again, narrative that falls upon the basic ethos of
responsibility, personal and collective, for looking after and then preserving nature and
the natural beauty of many terrains, all within the human scope the author suggests.
Critique and Preservation of Nature, of All.

via JOHN ROBERT FOWLES (d. 2005) : Humanism as “Childism”.
ANOTHER REASON FOR THE NOVEL

“NIGHT”.
Sunday, January 07, 2018
ONE LONG NIGHT
ONE LONG NIGHT, by Andrea Pitzer (2017, Little Brown).
This text by Andrea Pitzer, in addition to a quite good four – hundred – plus page survey
of detention and concentrations camps and their systems and concepts behind them, is a
brief condensation of what would be found in, or should be found in large research
libraries everywhere that have to do with politics, policy, economics and modernity. The
overall them of the book is not really anecdotal even though the book is a series of
individual stories mostly : The text examines nineteenth century concentration camps,
those in World War I, those developed in pre – World War II U.S.S.R.; the Nazi – model
concentration and death camps including the French models (occupation zone camps),
the Gulags of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; the “soccer stadium” – type camps such as
those used in Sarajevo and in 1973 Chile and Argentina; the Southeast Asian model
prison and detention camps of Kampuchea and Thailand that emerged out of the 1970’s
war in SEA; and finally the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba camp that houses criminals indicted
in the War on Terror of the 2000’s to today. That is a very quick and somewhat
necessarily detailed illustration of the different models of concentration camps and the
mindsets behind them, e.g., those in South America actually as based on a soviet or
Russian paradigm despite many different factors in the prison system in the West, the
types of people detained there, and the presumed longevity of the South American
camps.
The beginning models of concentration camps as we know them today from CNN and
“TIME Magazine” and so on, were developed principally to house criminals, first in groups
and then individually during and after conflicts such as the Boer War, the Spanish –
American War, colonial conflicts such as in South Africa and the like under the guise of
Lloyd George / Lord Kitchener, the U.S. Army under Sherman and Sheridan, and others;
and in South Africa under the 19 th century and later apartheid governments there. These
systems all had their own dissidents and dissenters as camps and prison systems do
today – the difference between then and now was systems of justice were without bias
entirely leaned toward the magistrature in the colonies where the camps were located
and judicial decisions by the authorities at the time tended to be less humane than they
are today. The old camps were very difficult in the additional punitive and retributive
factors they played in the sentencing or detention of an inmate. This is illustrated in the
first few chapters of the text having to do mostly with the camps of the Boer and colonial
wars, and then the Spanish – American War. Camps in the old time were neither ‘death’
nor ‘extermination’ nor per se ‘concentration’ camps, but mostly set up as prisons or work
camps, and people did grow ill and die in them without care.
Post – World War I, the concept of the death or extermination, or heavy concentration
camp came from a German model used in Africa for some time in the late 19 th century.
Language does not adequately describe the horror and terrible conditions of the camps in
the old days, nor even less does it describe the overall terror and horror of the original
modern concentration camps used in World War I and thereafter by combatants on the
Axis side. Work camps during the second World War were also set up in CA to house
suspicious elements that could counter U.S. war efforts and as a policy then and this
meant the Japanese in great part who were in the States at the time.
The interesting and captivating thing about the book is its description in all candor of the
modern development of camps, especially those used in Europe and Eastern Europe and
then in Asia – Pacific, then Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; not only that, but the ways in which
different historical events are directly linked to the implementation of this radical detention
and death system : The assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand leading to camps in
Germany and Czechoslovakia during the Great War; the linking of U.K. and other camps
to the sinking some years later of the “Lusitania”, and then the motive of genocide
integrated in to the design and building of the camp systems as they were. This includes
the Nazi camp system during the 1930’s through 1945, and the Japanese Imperial camp
system during that time also. One must mention that while these systems are and were
brutal and barbaric, nothing was really mentioned of the model soviet camps of the
Vorkuta, nor those in the Kolyma; nor really those around Moscow. The World War
German camps received the greatest attention as killing mechanisms as these are
apparently the most obvious among all and the message of the book, among others is
these mechanisms and designs are and were completely useless and while they do away
with people, do not result in reforming anyone. The mention of the German sites
eliminates Sobibor and Treblinka (in the same magnitude as Auschwitz – Birkenau;
Dachau, Chelmno) and what happened there, a sad omission. Also interesting was the
wholesale ignorance of Japanese Imperial work, detention and death camps apart from
those officially documented from the Philippines and Malay Peninsula. The Japanese,
further, when the war started to end, began moving especially foreign prisoners from the
other areas of their territories in Asia – Pacific back to Tokyo, presumably to work, but
absent defeat to serve as shields against possible invaders and then to be executed.
The overall heightened and spirited, metaphysical symbolism of the book cannot be
overestimated insofar as the betrayal of Elie Wiesel and his family stands out as a model
during the time camps entered in to public view about the end of the second World War.
That Wiesel, now deceased, came from Monowitz camp as directly supervised by the
Nazi hierarchy including Adolf Eichmann and others, and that Wiesel was Romanian in
origin point directly to his slim odds for survival once he entered the prison detention
structure of the day. Wiesel was a survivor from this “apotheosis of horror” as the Nazi
camp system as was the great Hannah Arendt, and escapee, from internment in the giant
Gurs concentration camp at the time in Southern France. The text is full of such personal
stories from Russia / U.S.S.R., the Baltics, World Wars, the Isle of Man, The Sudan and
Kenya in Africa, and South Africa; North Korea and China, Cuba, Cambodia and Viet
Nam, South America, and others; even Canada. The conclusion of the text is a cloud on
humanity and puts greater responsibility with all of us to see to the elimination of this
apparently indelible institution of conflict policy and war – camps will always be around, in
their deadly and diseased severity, as long as we allow for this. What precedes these
images, first of the glory of conflict and war as it is portrayed in the old fashioned comic –
book hero literature and news, then in the basics of camp attrition and so on, is that
someone at one time dreamt all this up and probably for profit – at its origin a dismal and
sorrowful line of thinking for those in a free world or those hoping and aspiring to one,
even relocating themselves and their families in showing their values about the virtues
and continued primacy of freedom and democracy.
“Zazie dans le métro …”

Tuesday, January 16, 2018
As usual, shocking. I do not understand you.
If One Got in His Way … Ronald Reagan, the

USSR, Nuclear...
Friday, January 26, 2018
REAGAN’S SECRET WAR : The Untold Story of His Fight to Save the World from
Nuclear Disaster, by Martin Anderson and Annelise Anderson (Crown Three Rivers,
2009)
The nuclear arms race as we know it, experts and novices alike, was around long before
Ronald Wilson Reagan became U.S. President in 1980, and predating even many people
and thereby many voters at the time as well. As governor of California, Ronald Reagan
dealt with many international issues given the overall multi – national business,
commerce, politics and industrial – strength culture of that state, and that until 1975 when
his gubernatorial term ran out. On a first level of analysis, Ronald Reagan had more to do
with ending the arms race, human rights and the end to the Cold War, or at least more to
do itself with managing these three disastrous factors outside U.S. shores into something
apart from a “hot war”, or a “separate peace” and so on; and to the very great benefit of
us all. Imagine a hot war with nuclear weapons and one in which even civilians have no
real safe haven, where all is a target for the lethality that starts in arms factories. The
horror and the evil of this inspired the man to seek high office, at least in part, and to do
something no one had previously done : Eisenhower had tried to stop a nascent arms
race, and so also to an extent had John Fitzgerald Kennedy (38th U.S. President).
Neither of these great men were particularly successful in this venture and all it involved.
This text by two college professors has to do with a prime mover of the Reagan White
House – nuclear arms disarmament and dismantlement, reduction and eventually (as
was the goal) abatement. As soon as the decks were clear from the 1980 election,
President Reagan, and then after surviving a very serious gunshot wound in an
assassination attempt, took it upon himself to face the communists in the Kremlin, lo with
the help of people like Sandy Burger and George Shultz; and other notable and very
gifted and talented negotiators, writers, strategists, professors, students even; and to
state how the future would look without the nuclear threat in terms those folk would
comprehend as a safe bet for the future of the world without Armageddon.
The late 1970’s and early 1980’s were marked by some changes in the ways government
and the establishment in the U.S. continued to work. Mostly, this was due to the advent of
items like personal computers, desktop and custom publishing and other automated
processes in bureaus and offices, public and private alike. The personal computer
revolutionized the way people thought in many ways about work and how work product
was produced. This was a boon to large institutions that did lots of paperwork and that
suddenly had more productive processes and people and this due to computing power.
Despite the risks of this, and that even today many computers are GIGO systems that
qualify as no more than a sandbox to play in, Reagan did see the productivity gains and
some of the other time and work – saving features of computers, even of late –
generation typing machines and so forth. This meant that workflow and the paper trail in
places just made for better people as made more streamlined and even virtual by
computers. Arms negotiators could start with an idea, and upon trusting a machine, could
use the machine to produce a very persuasive and wonderful document; in a sense a
little memorandum, each of these, was a little technological work of art. What’s the point
here, the man was a great, great writer who wrote simple dispatches for the radio, notes
to family and colleagues, and even the soviets, and often. This resulted in a circle of
people that got greater and greater over the years and that was an entire crowd by the
time the man was elected President.
His creation of many influential documents with a vision of what they might look like in
final form is very impressive given the volume of work, mostly handwritten of his personal
articles, letters, notes and dispatches, again from his own hand. By these literary things
of beauty, he could appeal and influence intelligent people in a way no one had before
and perhaps no one has since. Some of the elements of society, such as certain
members of the press did dislike this approach to communications as same believed Mr.
President was scripted and the like, would only call upon certain people in the room, etc.
He wrote personal, very personal letters to each of the four soviet leaders in office during
his eight years as Chief Executive : Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin
Chernenko, and Mikhail Gorbachev. Notes were sent to each of these on the subjects of
the day of which human rights and the nuclear arms race and nuclear proliferation,
nuclear safety, the specter of nuclear war and avoidance of this. The notes always hit
home and finally Mikhail Gorbachev, a very, extremely urbane head of state (CPSU Party
Secretary, primarily) responded to the notes and this given their thought processes and
appeal to items and issues that mattered not just to the U.S. – USSR school of politics,
but to the still atypical soviet man and family, and to its state hierarchy in the Kremlin in
Moscow : A very beautiful and very foreboding place under the circumstances. There
might have been half – a – dozen or more summits with the soviets based just upon
Reagan’s letters alone, and then upon their political import and content that was the
framework for agreements and treaties between the U.S. – USSR (1981 – 1989.) It is an
impressive record to have your letters turned into first state documents for policy and
then into international agreements and international relations policy at that. Speeches the
same, and he worked harder on the speeches.
This text is rich with excerpts from Reagan letters and speeches, and shows the strength,
overall leviathan, of the man as a communicator and not by contrivance, one who
appealed to intelligent people everywhere in expressing his points of view and with his
arguments that rang true. For a person regarded by some as shallow and in “Hollywood”
all the time, though none of that is nor was really applicable in describing him, the record
as shown by the authors here illustrates a mature and reasoned, persevering and rational
personality and related thought processes. How could this be? Yet, it was and is; and
was again a way for our leadership during the 1980’s to extricate us millions from the
possibility, and at the rate at which USSR was making ss – 20’s (wow!); and the
probability of nuclear firestorm and holocaust. To this great man of action, and of
correctly perceptive and evaluative judgment and thought processes, and all this without
computers, really, we all owe at least in the spirit we all have in calling ourselves
Americans and our country the United States of America, a great debt, tangible and
intangible to this man of great stature, perhaps if one can mention him singly as THE
hero of the Cold War. A great read.
Khruschev, by William Taubman (2003)

Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Stalingrad at 75, While God Made the World and Left the Devil to Manage.
KHRUSHCHEV : The Man and His Era (by William Taubman, 2003, W.W. Norton)
Originally, I picked up this book a little after the time it was published in 2004 and there
might even be a record of that somewhere. The text depicts at one a very street – smart
and conniving, and at the same time tragic figure who led the soviet union as a histrionic
peasant manager and who was hounded from office in the mid – 1960’s. Khrushchev is
mostly remembered for the Cuban missile crisis, though offhand he also condemned the
great leader and teacher Josef Stalin as a criminal, supplied the Viet Minh, greatly
increased the sea power of the soviet navy, put down the Hungarians in 1956, presided
the 1958 Berlin crisis and the building of the Berlin wall, “downed” Gary Powers, got away
with calling the U.S. President a political juvenile, and continued the communist world
revolution by building on its structure after his predecessors appointed him head of state
and CPSU Chairman. What of this? What of a party apparatchik from the Donetsk who
drove military conscripts into decisive battles during WWII and inspired them to win,
helped keeping the Germans out of Moscow in the war, more or less, and then these
other things, all officially in the history books as a series of greatly important facts and
events?
William Taubman in this great biography, though Khrushchev himself is not around to
authenticate it as he was the Strobe Talbott one (Khrushchev Remembers, 1970), and
though this makes the depiction of the man quite the more a leap into things Russian and
with a perspective on the CPSU keeping one safely away from the ideological proximity
of many dangerous conflicts that arise from reading about this ultimate political figure for
his time – at least insofar as Eastern Europe was concerned. In contrast to this book and
despite Talbott using the tapes that Khrushchev made personally, the 1970 biography is
enigmatic and sterile compared to this one. Whereas Taubman’s overall thesis of the
orthodox communism of Khrushchev and at the same time his romanticism and optimism,
while not always effusive, and while efforts and events to disseminate Marxism and the
revolution are in both texts, Mr. Taubman fills in things with greatly annotated and well –
researched writings from various sources that include memoirs, interviews, other media,
letters and files and so on that are more recently available and that authenticate that
Khrushchev was co – opted into lots of what he did as head of state and of the CPSU, at
least into the things that led to his quitting in 1964; and by the old Bolsheviks of whom
Malenkov, Kaganovich, Molotov, Malenkov, Zhukov; not just Gromyko and Dobrynin. His
manipulators in the Politburo might have spun him like a simple toy top, and Khrushchev
admittedly had stupefying blood on his hands from the purges and the war and was
beholden in his soul to these functioning Marxist intellectuals at the time who had found
and retained their senior work in government.
As a reviewer, I could step the reader through the series of life’s events above with some
level of analysis and conclusion of the person embodied in these : The purpose of
properly reading the book would then be defeated, and the text is a really well – written,
“worth it” and the like to read – by no means just an ordinary biography. One theme that
runs throughout the text and that is on the overleaf of the book in the form of a map, is
that Khrushchev took advantage as much he could of bombast and bluster about his
expansive country, its eleven time zones, its ethnicities (though many of these had been
broken and migrated to other areas of the state by Stalin – a great crime), and its
peoples, all with good shoes and warm clothing, at least a good shirt on their backs; and
with excellent police and interior security forces, not to mention the successful spying
abroad, that drove the success – by – control and oppression of the CPSU, and without
most people really complaining about it. Most soviet people, even most Russians and
Ukrainians remained aloof from Khrushchev’s actual political business and agnostic
about it at the same time; and in this is maybe betrayed a little of the peasant affability
and charm of the man who quite often shows an earthy and jovial, raucous, though not
scandalous, sense of humor – fooling at least some of the people some of the time.
In this is a paradox again of the reflections one is given of and on the subject of
Khrushchev through Taubman’s narrative : The author did see and maybe even almost
meet this enigmatic and puzzling historical figure at the occasion of a U.S.S.R. state visit
to New York in 1959, and then with ideas (later) in hand, and vouching for his own views,
painstakingly and with apparently much work, assembled the biography as published.
The year 1989 did help authors and researchers of things soviet to tie down the features
of their cast of characters that had been so ethereal for most readers since some time
ago. Khrushchev, like all Russian leaders, had a compendium of writings and was big on
things like the state farm and the heavy industry in the country and the extraction
business for oil and so on; rocketry, too. His writings, full of his interviews and agricultural
subject matter, fill many volumes.
Khrushchev’s son Sergei and another relative did write books on him though the
Taubman and even the Talbott (again, 1970) narratives do better justice to the man as
same are not simple collections or just series vignettes of the person : Talbott portrays an
enigmatic and untruthful apparatchik, and Khrushchev would have wept at Taubman’s
portrayal as a well – written and researched text that holds a mirror up to corrupt and
embattled soviet leadership and to the terrible business of the Cold War as conducted by
these people, all complicit in Stalin’s crimes, and those of his secret police also. In a
word, the book portrays Khrushchev, from Kalinkova, as agonized and shoulder – to – the
– wheel as many soviet people were in the day and still are, and ultimately alone in his
work and age at that.
We Must (Have) … .
Thursday, February 15, 2018
GHOST / POLYTECHNIC / SCIENTIST.

Man of the Hour : James B. Conant, Warrior Scientist. By Jennet Conant (2017, Simon
and Schuster)
During the time of “horseshoes and atom bombs”, there were a number of extremely well
– studied, technically very apt and mannered, and then ruthless as well, people in the
Eastern U.S. establishment : James B. Conant was famously one of them. A
swashbuckling “ghost” from his youth to the end of his days at age 83 – 84, he was also a
gifted actor for various purposes, a cultural and scientific genius at that, and then just a
very genteel human being. Conant was old enough to have been through both World
Wars, and the way people are being lost today, and those who remember these conflicts
are not the militarist extremists who are so loathsome to ordinary, reasonable and
prudent people. They are and / or were Halberstam’s best and brightest, not that they all
had their end in an obscure part of Dallas or at Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel. Conant
was in the thick of the deadly game called “Cold War” and he survived it longitudinally,
probably through knowledge of and identification with some very tough French resistance
fighters in the war (WWII now.)
He was a chemist who worked with poison gas, i.e., chlorine vapors, phenyls, diphenyls,
fluorine, plus more, and all targeted at fearful enemies of us all. Starting with the WWII
Nazis. He formed committees to do things wherever he went — as a Harvard professor,
one can do that : National Defense Research Committee and several nuclear weapons
committees, going back and forth repeatedly during WWII from U.S. to U.K. The Nazis
wanted to invade Britain on more than one front, and Arthur Vandenburg knew this and
enlisted the help of Conant in his various and sundry spy – ring activities. Typically,
Conant served as a supervisor, or manager among his peers. He was the target himself
in various schemes hatched by people, and part of the reason his son Jim had difficulties
had to do with people not getting at the father, so same and their secret agents went after
the son. James Conant had two sons, Ted and Jim along with wife “Patty”.
After 1940 (Spring), the Nazis turned their air and firestorm war upon their adversaries
and nemeses the British and were flying bombs into the urban areas of London. Against
the Nazis, Conant was a messenger of hope for people who wanted to face the Germans
alone, along with Winston Churchill and some others. More atomic O.S.D.R. for Conant
resulted from the entry into the war by the U.S. and more of its allies, especially given the
atomic project to oversee that would last upon people’s pride and people’s angry moods
about the war, the transitional military, and goings on in CA’s Bohemian Grove.
There were four labs developing the ordnance used as “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” and
their test cases : At Cambridge, MetLabs, Oak Ridge and Lawrence Livermore. Oppy
(Oppenheimer) had asked for an additional one at Los Alamos that turned out to be the
best “camp” for the atomic scientists and where the Manhattan Project scientists (or
nearby at least) tested the first nuke. Another extremely high – caliber person in the
Manhattan Project was Enrico Fermi, a person who whipped everything into shape
wherever he went and who never, nor rarely, left things behind nor loose ends. Enrico
Fermi greatly contributed to the configuration and implementation of the U.S. A – bomb
that would at once annul the changing “act” that one might have used belief or un – belief
about the Nazis and their mystery project, a German A – bomb.
1942 was the year of the final solution for the Jews of Europe, and the year in which the
U.S. atomic bomb project wound its way through a network of experiments, project
scientists made efforts to finalize design and the like. Equally important for the U.S.
soldier and those who wanted to survive the war, was Conant keeping the project moving
despite the chaos of the war and having all these inventive tinkerers pointing,
gesticulating, prognosticating and then finally creating the machine. This book is not just
about the Manhattan Project and what became of it after the bombing of Japan, but it is
about the various personalities around Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves, and
then James Conant in all those scientific places same frequented over the course of the
war while inventing nuclear weapons. That nuclear weapons have been used on the
earth is not a comforting idea. It’s a miserable idea, but better than an undermanned D –
day – type invasion of Honshu and the anticipated American losses. So that was not to
be, either. Thus, so goes the tale of nuclear weapons invention, the Cold War, the more
developed gossip pages as people grew apart, Truman defeating Dewey, Edward Teller’s
explosions, the McCarthy Hearings, Allen and John F. Dulles, the Tehran and Potsdam
conferences, … . All through the lens of James B. Conant, spy – savant, polytechnic,
Harvard scientist, society personality, business executive and more. That might be the
first twenty pages of this text. Great!
The Bible, No Matter Your Approach to It, Is a

Truth — As...
Monday, February 26, 2018
… DUE TO BILLY GRAHAM — APART FROM THE KHALIL GHIBRAN’S OF THE
WORLD – PASSING OF THE PROPHET BILLY GRAHAM .
“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to
them : For this is the law and the prophets.” Matthew 7 : 12.
Last week I was on the internet and a bulletin came up on my computer screen that Billy
Graham’s family and friends were transporting him from Asheville to Charlotte, NC. The
first thing I considered is there would be a televised memorial service after his remains
were helicoptered to Charlotte, NC, and then maybe salted over the countryside in and
around Charlotte itself from the air. Low and behold, Graham’s remains were being
transported on the highway by hearse automobile to his final resting place, remote in the
Carolinas. This is how traditional in some ways the will of Billy Graham is and was and so
he might live on in the hearts of the many Americans along that highway route who
saluted and waved standing and from their cars stopped at the side of the closed
roadway, and for those of us watching the motorcade remotely.
Billy Graham first became known, at least to people in my generation, through popular
media and the papers where his picture often appeared to us as children reading the
papers and watching television – he appeared so much on T.V. at one time that he might
have been considered more powerful, e.g., than Walter Cronkite or Peter Jennings, or
even Tom Brokaw. This was not really true as there is no ordinary measure of how many
people Graham actually reached with his message and the different ways in which the
man was understood by each and every individual who heard his teachings about
Christianity, morality and conduct in modern life. He was regarded as non – Catholic, and
even anti – Catholic by many of the clergy as he brought to the fore many of the
objections to the idea of the Pope in Rome, including the occasional gaffes by the Roman
Catholic Church and its periodic scandals. Graham was, however, extremely strident and
in many ways very persuasive in his editorials on human rights and abortion that
paralleled those of the Catholic Church, maybe enough to cause a little Graham
consternation for stealing his thunder over these difficult questions. The fundamentalist
Christianity that Graham professed depended upon one’s acknowledged relationship and
personalized it was for each and every one of us, with the Lord God and his Son Jesus of
Nazareth. The open language used to illustrate this and described not predestination, but
a life ordained by God and the life of Jesus as a model and inspiration for all along with
the lives of the saints and prophets, was bothersome for naysayers and doubters, if not
threatening and dangerous for these people as well. These themes that ran through
Graham’s editorials and teachings gave hope, much hope to people. The only similar
example that comes to mind is the hopes and aspirations Ronald Reagan gave to the
League of Women Voters when starting out on his political career, and that non –
denominational, not agnostic nor apostates, nor the un – lettered as one had to believe
and to be able to understand to hear, believe and follow Graham’s teachings from
anywhere and again his word and teachings as non – denominational in nature :
Christianity is really the one, true faith and this inspired by the values of monotheistic
people, Christian Americans included in this, and the American people overall over the
entire country from all walks of life. He believed in the Christian moral fiber of America
and the moral strength and conviction of its people, and the virulent anti – communism
(and for good reason) of his teachings and sermons was also palpable and ran through
his life and conduct also, and this given an avoidance of the urbane and sophisticated,
especially in how these are institutionalized by the left and the American liberal parties.
I mention this things as a sinner before the passed Billy Graham, as the man believed we
were all sinners before God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. No man is without sin, nor woman
for that matter, and Graham believed in the redemption of sin and the path of the
exemplary life for all at least in its possibilities and probabilities, and in terms of the
Christian gospels, maybe among these four John and Matthew became his most quoted
as these are greatly more understandable and comprehensible than those of Luke and
Mark; saints all, nonetheless. In his teachings over the gospels, the objections to the
preponderance, even ownership of Christianity by the papacy, and this an apparent
interpretation, Graham taught a blended Christian faith in his prophetic and iconic talks
and writings. Many of the themes and subjects that occupied his life’s work called for
prophetic and other proportions of popular and overall faith and religious appeal. The
importance of the Bible’s old testament books and the lesser books as well used by the
Hebrews are important in this way also, and those having to do with “in the time of Jesus”
all the more important.
Whereas many popular preachers, politicians and spokesman for various causes
stumbled and bumbled, even uttered profanity when their public profiles and talks,
teachings and literature were looked at with any acuity, Graham flourished under this and
spoke his beliefs plainly and with great certainty and in a language that is easy to
understand; otherwise impossible to dismiss as whimsical, fantastic nor magical.
Contrary to who Billy Graham was and is in our hearts and minds, and given the “either
or” nature of many modern prophets before their own doctrine, dogmas, and faiths,
Graham stood in great relief to these, perhaps greatly above all as one who had the
stature morally and the heart, experience and deliberateness and overall belief that
invited his judgment on various questions, the responses to which he gave without
gossip, innuendo, slogans, nor errors nor omissions in the fundamentals. The record will
certainly show this. In this we do pray.
Talks Fighting Merchant of the Unnameable.

Friday, March 09, 2018
Accessibility of the Inaccessible – North Korea and Nuclearization 2018.
To begin with, the proposed summit with D.P.R.K., an idea arrived at by the state of North
Korea during this time of “us and them” politics versus the United States, is a complete
and utter surprise that appears to have to do more with D.P.R.K. staying in the
community of nations than actually resolving peace with South Korea and with the great
powers that include Japan at this time as well. Kim Jong Eun’s proposal for a historic
summit with U.S. President Trump (no U.S. President has met with the North Koreans to
date) might be said to be a reaction to successful and ongoing U.S. / R.O.K. exercises in
South Korea that propose difficulties to the North Koreans at this time. Keep in mind that
no matter the clichés involved here, this is not theater : North Korea is not a signatory of
the NPT, and has not resolved its nuclear issues internally, possibly and probably, and
might just be suggesting a meeting to see what it might learn from the U.S. talks, and
then try using the U.S. strategy against any Americans voicing opinion against the
nuclear aggression of the North Koreans that follows more a path of Stalinist totalitarian
practices rather than one based upon international consensus or popular opinion on
nuclear proliferation and development. The announcement from the South Korean foreign
office by Chung Eui Yong is nonetheless welcome for anyone wondering what the use of
D.P.R.K. targeting Japan and the U.S. with missiles apart from the very base and
wrongful ideations of blackmail and extortion, something that has been attempted on
Cuba by the U.S.S.R. over thirteen days in October 1962. This show of soviet might
within then the American Caribbean at the time was partly theatrics and partly deadly
serious – the soviets again were testing the resolve of the young U.S. President. One
might speculate primarily here that apart from what they wish to learn about talks with the
U.S. at this time about de – nuclearization (incidentally, not dismantlement, nor abating
nuclear proliferation) to call for a pause in U.S. / R.O.K. exercises, to again learn from the
U.S. nuclear weapons development abatement efforts, and then to provoke thereby or
give further D.P.R.K. cause for accelerating the North Korean nuclear weapons
development efforts prima facie after spending a little time speaking and exchanging
papers with the U.S. head of state and cabinet. An additional wariness has to do with, as
has been mentioned here above, seeking additional activities given this entire
entanglement with the U.S. and South Korea and even with P.R.C., having to do with
extortion and blackmail using the infant nuclear arsenal of the D.P.R.K. to inform or
attribute greater credence to Stalinism and the communist cause outside other areas of
Asia – Pacific and South and Southeast Asia.
North Korean policies are overall supported in principle by China and the Russian
Federation, though less directly by the Russians who nonetheless have a Pacific fleet
that might take up the North Korean cause in a military conflict with the U.S. The Chinese
also have a Black Sea aircraft carrier that projects their naval power and political territory
much more than before. This policy behind such vessels for the Chinese is as much
contrary to U.S. interests in the Pacific as is any possible North Korean missile launch
capability on other Asian nations or the U.S., if not more so. Any military exchange
initiated by and involving North Korea, and D.P.R.K. has operation – capable missiles at
this time and is capable of flying these against its near – neighbor adversaries at least,
including perhaps even T’ai wan; might, and this given many, many, well – founded
pitfalls and hazards, traps and dead – ends, etc., for the U.S., completely mechanically
call Russian and Chinese navies and military forces into a horrible, explosive and
irradiated chasm against the U.S. forces in Asia – Pacific right now.
The realpolitik that countervails this image of boats trying to sink boats, in addition to
what would go on over land between Seoul and Pyongyang, and others to the South and
West of the Korean Peninsula, is the announced acknowledgement of the de –
nuclearization necessity for the Korean Peninsula, and a maximal reduction of the missile
gap between North and South Korea at this time. People might talk about this all for years
and barely scratch the surface as the reference to the missile gap on the Korean
Peninsula as referred to today in Chung Eui Yong’s brief talk in Washington, D.C., is a
point that must be heavily contended by the South Koreans who do have nuclear
warheads and such claims to a missile gap by D.P.R.K. must take into consideration the
nearby Russian and Chinese nuclear rockets, and those by the Chinese that might be
now on T’ai wan; those that are across territorial borders though that would have to be
disclosed in any missile agreement for reduction of rockets and their ordnance –
presumably this includes Russia and China, North Korea and T’ai wan on the one hand
and the U.S. – Japan – R.O.K. on the other. While the “maximum pressure” sanctions
involving South Korea and Japan appear to be working well, there needs be more
pressure from the international community for D.P.R.K. to begin giving serious
consideration to the long – term effectiveness of Trump sanctions, other greater and
greater international and societal pressures on the regime, additional international
solidarity, and the faithfulness in resolving things of the president of South Korea at this
time, and that Mr. Moon would be supported by the community of nations.
Trump and the Tariffs (While “Tariffs” Is Reall...

Saturday, March 10, 2018
“IN CAPS” — GROWTH, LOW EMPLOYMENT, LOW INFLATION, LOW BORROWING

RATES, AND THEN WHY STEEL AND ALUMINIUM TARIFFS ARE NOT JUST “UGHH!”
TARIFFS ON ALUMINIUM AND STEEL (DEPENDING UPON RAW MATERIALS UP TO
FINISHED GOODS, AND WHERE TARIFFS ARE IN THE METALS PRODUCTION
SUPPLY CHAIN) : CONSIDER WHERE THE ALUMINUM AND STEEL INDUSTRIES
ARE RIGHT NOW COMPARED TO WHERE THEY WERE YEARS AGO, AND THE
WORLD ACTUALLY USES LOTS OF BOTH OF THESE. MUCH IS ALSO NEEDED,
FROM ELECTRICITY AND COAL TO MACHINERY TO TECHNOLOGY TO HUMAN
RESOURCES AND CAPITAL TO PRODUCE EVEN A SMALL AMOUNT OF
ALUMINIUM AND / OR STEEL – THIS CONSIDERATION OR CONSIDERATIONS IS
APPARENTLY THE GOAL OF THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE : TO BRING BACK TO THE
U.S. THE DOMESTIC STEEL -MAKING AND METAL – MAKING SUPPLY CHAIN AND
THE SUPPLY CHAINS FOR OTHER MAJOR METAL AND MATERIALS IN ORDER TO
STOP THE RETREAT OF AMERICAN INDUSTRY INTO A DWINDLING NINNIE ON
THESE FRONTS.
CONSIDERING “COST” OF EVERYTHING TO PRODUCE ALUMINIUM AND STEEL,
THE PRICES FOR EVERYTHING OF THIS NATURE IN THE U.S. ARE HIGHER THAN
IN MOST PLACES, AND THIS MIGHT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH LABOR COSTS
NOR ANYTHING, THE PRODUCTION IS JUST BETTER BY ITS NATURE HERE AND
THERE IS MORE MONEY IN THE COUNTRY AS PEOPLE WORK HARDER
RESULTING IN MORE CASH AND CAPITAL PRODUCED. IT MIGHT BE A WHILE
BEFORE, FOR EXAMPLE, THAT IF AT ALL DUE TO THE SAME PROTECTIONIST
SENTIMENTS IN CHINA AND ITS ASIA – PACIFIC NEIGHBORS, WE EXPORT STEEL
TO JAPAN OR CHINA; BUT THE REPATRIATION OF EARNINGS AND PROFITS,
JUST U.S. CURRENCY FROM MULTI – NATIONAL BUSINESS THAT IS
FUNDAMENTALLY AND RIGHTFULLY U.S. DOMESTIC BUSINESS IS NOT A BAD
IDEA. THIS CAN TAKE THE FORM OF SIGNIFICANT TARIFFS THAT ARE IN OTHER
TERRITORIES BY OTHER COUNTRIES PROTECTING AND GUARDING THE
PATRIMONY AGAINST BEING UNDERMINED BY OUTSIDE ECONOMIC
ADVERSITIES. TARIFFS ALLOW FOR A WAY TO PRESERVE INDUSTRY AT HOME
OR TO REDEEM IT, NOT NECESSARILY TO SERVE AS A TRADE BARRIER.
CAPITAL FLOWS AND INTEREST RATES FOR BORROWING, EVEN INDUSTRY
GROWTH AND ECONOMIC GROWTH OVERALL MIGHT ONLY BE AFFECTED
MARGINALLY, IF AT ALL, BY INDUSTRY – PRESERVING AND REDEEMING TARIFFS
THAT ARE NOT LITERALLY NOR DIRECTLY PURPOSEFULLY TRADE –
RESTRICTIVE.
AN EXAMPLE OF THE WAY THE TARIFFS WOULD WORK MIGHT HAVE TO DO
WITH A SIMPLE “COST PLUS” ILLUSTRATION OF MARKET PRICES FOR
COMPUTERS, MENTION TABLET COMPUTERS FROM “MOOGLE” : MARKET
PSYCHOLOGY AND OTHER FACTORS ACTUALLY PLAY AS SIGNIFICANT A ROLE
IN THE INFORMED CHOICES OF CONSUMERS IN CHOOSING THEIR PRODUCTS,
AND THIS ALL UP AND DOWN THE SUPPLY CHAIN. IF I AM SELLING A TABLET
COMPUTER IN THE U.S., THE CHANCES ARE I WILL RECEIVE MORE CASH FOR
THIS ITEM, THAN FOR INSTANCE IF I SOLD IT IN NAIROBI OR IN PANMUNJOM.
THE REASONS FOR THIS ARE NUMEROUS BUT ARE ENCAPSULATED IN THE
PRINCIPLE THAT U.S. PEOPLE HAVE MORE PURCHASING POWER THAN IN
OTHER PLACES UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES AND THE MARKET BEARS A
HIGHER – PRICE. THIS IS ESPECIALLY TRUE WITH RESPECT TO ELECTRONICS
AND HAS BEEN FOR DECADES. MENTION THAT I SELL “MOOGLE” TABLETS THAT
ARE TYPICALLY LOWER IN PRICE, BUT I MIGHT CHARGE A MEDIUM PRICE, FAR
ABOVE MY OWN “COST PLUS” PRICE IN MANY REGIONS OF THE GLOBE IN THE
U.S. DUE TO THE GREATER PURCHASING POWER OF THE CONSUMER HERE.
THERE ARE PERMUTATIONS OF PRICE POINTS I CAN TRY, BUT MORE OR LESS I
CHARGE A MEDIUM PRICE – A PRICE DENOTING QUALITY, DURABILITY,
SUSTAINABILITY, AND MANY OTHER POSITIVE ATTRIBUTES TO MY COMPUTIING
DEVICE THAT I BUILD INTO THE DEVICE IN ADDITION TO THE PROCESSOR,
MEMORY, DISPLAY AND SO ON. THERE IS A SAFE BET, BASED UPON MY
EDUCATED GUESS ABOUT WHAT TO DO WITH RAISING THE PRICE OF MY
COMPUTING DEVICES, THAT I COULD SELL OODLES AND OODLES OF THESE
ITEMS GIVEN MARKET PSYCHOLOGY, THE PERCEPTIONS ON MY PRODUCT I
PRODUCE, ADVERTISING AND ECONOMETRICS OF OTHER SORTS. THINK OF
THE TARIFFS AS A MIRRORING OF THIS AND AS A WAY TO INFLUENCE CHOICE
THE WAY A BENEVOLENT PARENT WOULD CHANGE THE ATTITUDE OF A YOUNG
ONE – IN MANY WAYS, WITH PRODUCTS SUCH AS STEEL AND ALUMINIUM,
QUALITY AND VALUE OF THE PRODUCTS ARE BASED UPON CONSUMER
PERCEPTIONS AS DESCRIBED ABOVE, EVEN GIVEN THE DIFFERENT GRADES OF
THE METALS USED IN PRODUCTION OR AS FINAL PRODUCTS THEMSELVES.
THERE IS NOTHING INCORRECT IN THE HOME RULE REINFORCING A. THE
FUTURE VIABILITY AND OVERALL ECONOMIC VALUE AND MARKET
CAPITALIZATION OF COMPANIES IN A COUNTRY WITH COMMERCE IN HEAVY
INDUSTRY – THIS PRACTICE IS AS OLD AS THE DUTCH HORSETRADERS
PORTRAYED IN THE RIJKSMUSEUM IN THE OLD COUNTRY (CENTURIES) ; AND
THEN B. ASSURING AND RE – ASSURING THE ADDITIONAL PURCHASING POWER
OF THE U.S. CITIZEN AT HOME WHERE AMERICAN ECONOMIC AND OTHER
REGISTERS OF VALUE ARE PRODUCED THAT SUPPORT THE VALUE OF OUR
CURRENCY EVERYWHERE THROUGH DIRECT AND INDIRECT PRICE SUPPORTS.
IN ALL THIS, C. THERE IS EVEN AN ELEMENT OF THRIFT, SAVINGS AND
INVESTMENT DOMESTICALLY FOR THE U.S. AS THE PRODUCTION SUPPLY
CHAIN BECOMES HEALTHY AGAIN FOR U.S. METALS AND FINDS ITS INDUSTRIAL
FOOTING AND FOOTPRINT AGAIN.
OUR INTERNATIONAL TRADING PARTNERS DO NOT LIKE THIS AS THE U.S. USES
SOME HIGH PERCENTAGE, ACTUALLY, OF THE WORLD’S STEEL AND ALUMINUM
ANYWAY AND SHOULD HAVE A SAY IN THE MARKET STRUCTURE FOR TRADE IN
THESE MATERIALS. THIS IS WHY TARIFFS AT TIMES ARE PROTECTIONIST, BUT
TARIFFS ARE NOT ALWAYS STRICTLY BAD FOR THE ECONOMY. INSTEAD OF
THE WINDOW DRESSING FOR THE STATE OF THE ECONOMY THAT CAN
INCLUDE UP AND DOWN LEADING INDICATORS AND THEN EVEN THE
UNEMPLOYMENT AND BORROWING RATES, MACROECONOMIC GROWTH AND
LOW INFLATION; THINK PURCHASING POWER, CAPITAL FLOWS AND CURRENCY
VALUES. THERE IS EVEN SOME CREDENCE THAT SMALL OR MODERATE
INFLATION WITHIN THE U.S. IN THE FUTURE WILL RESULT IN REMEDIATION OF
LEADING ECONOMIC INDICATORS AND VALUES TO ASSURE GREATER GROWTH
OVER THE LONG TERM THAN UNNATURAL MOVING AND SHAKING OF FINANCIAL
AND ECONOMIC INSTITUTIONS WITHIN OUR BORDERS THAT AMOUNTS
SOMETIMES TO JUST SO MUCH SHUFFLING.
“Kingdom of God” … “Genoci...

Saturday, March 24, 2018
PRECURSOR TO BESLAN AND NALCHIK, ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA, NORD – OST,
THE DEMISE OF GENERALS, AND MORE ….
TOWERS OF STONE : THE BATTLE OF WILLS IN CHECHNYA, by Wojciech Jagielski

(Seven Stories Press, N.Y., 2004)
This novel is a story of people and places, specifically the Caucasus region of the former
soviet union during 1999 – 2000’s. The text illustrates for the common reader the
genocidal and nightmarish horrors, terror, violence, crimes and barbarity of the Chechen
civil war in which Russia intervened (during first the Yeltsin then the Putin government)
against counter – government rebel forces in the Caucasus in the regions of Ingushetia,
Georgia, Dagestan, Northern Ossetia, Uzbekistan, and Kabarda, among other near
neighbors of the Russians in that area. The participation of the Russian army (Red Army)
in this conflict was mercenary and the result of a long history of anti – Russian sentiment
and belief and opposition to Russian influences in the territory of Russia dating to times
of the Czar. The narrator given an excellent account of the conflicts starting in the 19th
century under Russian rebels led by Chechen guerilla fighter and leader Baysan – Gur.
The atrocious brutality of this conflict (1999 – 2000) was shown in the E.U. organizational
assembly in 2007, though only very, very briefly due to illustrations of graphic terror and
violence on both the sides of the Russians and opposing Chechen military and
paramilitary forces.
The modern history of Chechnya is extremely complicated and dates to political,
economic, cultural and other conflicts and divides between Grozny and Moscow at the
time of the Second World War during which time fighting in the region developed a
propensity for mercenary activity, and the legacy of which in 1994 invited deliberation and
then planning by Moscow’s Red Army to enter Grozny then without force in support of a
coup to oust Chechen leaders and their government. The Chechen conflict turned out to
be a series of pitched and brutal battles between the Red Army, again, and counter –
government forces that struck in the territory around Grozny and then that would retreat
into the hills nearby or at a distance, especially to the West and the North. The Chechens
undoubtedly under the rear view of the author are most guilty of terrorism and terrorist
acts per se against the Russians, and as led by Shamil Basayev. This war, deemed a
war of generals, and a war against terrorism, was the result of a Kremlin decree against
the Chechen administration and in which the Russians battled local guerillas only to lose,
and all told in this conflict, 100 , 000 or more of their soldiers and officers. The principle of
the conflict was to regain, value for value, moneys owed the Russian government by the
Chechens in a nation, a failed state in which the major industry was crime, by the taking
of territory first and then the seat of government in Grozny. As the result of initial victories,
Basayev and the rebels called elections in 1995 after a truce declared in April (April 21,
1995). The elections failed to produce a positive result of proportions to any of the parties
to conflict and led to a second war in 1999 in which the city of Grozny was largely
destroyed in battles, day unto day, house by house, by ground forces, artillery, and soviet
– style air and armored air power.
An additional phase of the conflict had to do with the Red Army taking the countryside
after the capitol of the country, Grozny, and the brutal battles and terror spread to the
areas mentioned in the first paragraph here, much to the condemnation of the Arab world
and imams, mullahs and sheikhs, and the like representing and Islamic Republic and the
law of the Koran. The major fighting in the countryside took place on the Dagestan –
Chechnyan border, of which the following locations at the same time, auls and villages,
all – Rahata, Tando, Agrino, Ayalta, Galatea, Shaura, Anda and many others, among
them Botlikh, Shoroda, Makhachkala, Urus – Martan, Nazran, Shamil, Katyr – Yurt. The
strategy of the guerillas at this point was to drive the Red Army, and the Russians
themselves, out of the villages back to Grozny where additional house – to – house
fighting would wear them down. The specific battle areas and tactical geography included
the valley around Terek River, and other valleys, and the inclines of the hills with names
like “Donkey’s Ear” and Bald Mountain, and “Wolf’s Gate”. In the mountains where
Basayev retreated, there were caverns that withstood bombing and artillery, and there
the rebels had safe refuge, though same also could not fight the invading military
centered mostly around Grozny. The Russians, in addition to readily and frequently
bombing Grozny would bomb Dagestan and other border towns.
The cast of characters includes photo – journalists, radio journalists, politicians, the
Russian Generals including Aslan Maskhadov who sought an end to the war from its
inception and who died in 2005 at the hands of Chechen guerillas outside Grozny. Shamil
Basayev, leader of the counter – government forces, also died in an explosion that same
year. The Chechen fall and winter at the time apparently called for liquor and severe cold,
while spring and summer were marked by bitter tea and cigarettes as luxuries for
combattants. The Chechen family of fighters included not only people from native
Chechnya, but Cherkas, Avars, Dargins, Laks, Kummuks, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kazakhs,
Turkmen, Azeri and Lezgin peoples and more. This is a great fictional portrayal of this
conflict and a model if one wishes to analyze the mullah’s version of “total” holy war,
Jihad, faith in the mujahideen; all against, as the Chechens have the reputation to be
“against the psychology of submission” [A. Solzhenitsyn]. Though the text presents by
implication radical views of both sides, and the Chechen people as problem people within
the Russian sphere of influence and culture : an excellent read.
After a Speech at College.

Thursday, March 29, 2018
CONFIDENTIAL. DRAFT – REDUX : JAMES COMEY AND THE F.B.I. After a speech by
Joseph E. di Genova, former United States Attorney on January 25, 2018 at college in
Washington, D.C.
Plot by plot, high – ranking FBI and Department of Justice (DoJ) officials under Barack
Obama made concerted and deliberate efforts to tamper any investigation of Hillary
Clinton in the last general election endgame of 2016 to influence voters in favor of
Clinton, and then barring any losses in the election, the liberal party approved methods to
frame Donald J. Trump with a connection to Russia and the Russian Federation meddling
in America’s internal affairs; and with the Trump people in collusion with the Russian
Federation. The idea that Trump was to steal the U.S. Presidency, and this was against
DNC values and the erroneous accusations against him were the result of pure hate for
the man.
This apparent election deal involving James Comey of the FBI, his deputy Andrew
McCabe and their associates Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Attorney Lisa Page, agent
Peter Strzok, attorney James Baker, Bruce Ohr and others, have affected the intangible
establishment of the national trust in destroying public faith in the Justice Department.
Robert Mueller’s Russia “connection” during the U.S. 2016 general election, as provoking
an investigation by the Justice Department in the form of a collusion probe, is father to
the thought of other, politically – based investigations past and present. Many Americans
when asked about the probe believe the DoJ withheld vital information from Congress
about the Clintons and their connections to Russia; and by this a proper election
investigation. Many such blighted investigations such as Mueller’s DoJ investigation are
so characterized by failure, leaks, dysfunction, that one can hardly call them
investigations proper. Since early March 2005, Hillary Clinton was publicly determined to
have a secret, personal e – mail server that contained messaging to shed light on the
disposition of the attack in Libya on Ambassador Stevens (deceased) on September 11,
2012; and when the “New York Times” published its story about thousands of secret e –
mails, some thousands disappeared as well, and Clinton had her phone system smashed
with hammers.
Despite this, any investigation was delayed until presumably a grand jury could be
convened for a year to properly investigate the wrongs that took place. This, through
James Comey and Loretta Lynch, called officially through these officials not for a grand
jury (whence proper investigations would have happened and proper subpoenas issued)
but for an evaluation of the e – mails of and around Hillary Clinton. When questioned on
the subject of the e – mails, Clinton remarked that she could not recall properly, having
had a head injury. Questioning was conducted by a biased (liberal – minded) agent, Peter
Strzok who would not verify the injury claim through looking at medical records, and
further, James Comey allowed the omission of records, then lenient as ever towards
Clinton, would otherwise not have the proper warrants nor subpoenas issues. Comey
claims lots of his decision content here was based on timing, though the emails
investigation started in 2015 during the summer, nearly a year before Clinton’s immunity
deals. Contrarily, the FBI investigation of Gen. James F. Cartwright was cut and try after
the general admitted to leaking written and verbal details and making a related false
statement when questioned about it.
In Clinton’s case, not only were no timely search warrants, subpoenas, and other writs
issued to halt the destruction of any documents, records or the e – mails themselves, the
destruction (deletion of thousands of e – mails on purpose) of evidence took a toll on any
research the DoJ was doing. Hillary Clinton, in situ deleted thousands of her own e –
mails, one – half of the total that were “top secret” / CONFIDENTIAL, when she claimed
to have turned over all the applicable e – mails, and many, presumably of the sought –
after e – mails were not relinquished. Comey’s ignorance and irresponsibility is in his
avoidance by omission of issuing subpoenas and warrants; allowing an attorney in patent
conflict (Ohr) to represent four witnesses at a questioning; commented on, and
interconnected in the affairs of the top secret / CONFIDENTIAL e – mails and after
granting immunity to two Clinton legal aides, allowing Ohr to sit in on Clinton’s July 2,
2016, interview. Comey would not convene a grand jury, almost as if he did not know the
rules. Clinton needed to be summoned and questioned (and in response with her
interrogator and in response to all, to declare the 5th Amendment) while James Comey
allowed as well the Clinton destruction of computing systems then under subpoena by
Congress. By this and by other infractions, James Comey is and was in violation of
judicial protocols of the DoJ, violated the chain of command in a federal bureau in
assuming authority he did not have, substituting his authority for that of the U.S. Attorney
General, and more.
Separately, but equally equivocal and ambiguous in nature were allegations the Trump
campaign had first tolerated and then colluded with Russian (Federation) interference in
the 2016 U.S. election, and while these allegations again go back to 2015, they became
more attention – getting when Trump became a general election presidential nominee in
2016. The Inspector General Michael Horowitz gathered evidence of Russian hacking
given Trump presence at events where this was a concern only and the Horowitz and
other – generated papers indicated a fabricated, along with Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page,
Trump involvement in this as the result of FBI fabrication itself. As much is indicated in a
record of an August 2016 DNC meeting in an FBI supervisor’s office over DNC hate of
Trump and the threat of a Trump election victory in November.
Upon proper investigation, and given the bias in the Comey probe of Trump intended to
frame him, the investigative work was and is obviously the work or double – dealers and
blaming investigative personnel. Part of the fallacy of the investigation had been the
fabricated ‘Steele Dossier’, the claims of which were to taint the Trump Presidency, that
in its claims individually or by the entirety has null been verified by proper investigators.
There had been originally, a retired Trump associate, Carter page, who had traveled to
Russia on his own ticket and returned to the U.S. without incident. The Comey people
sought to apply provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to illegally disrupt
the Trumps and their presidential bid, and used an approved wiretap or wiretaps in the
intercepting of communications as reviewed by President Barack Obama. In this, the FBI
and DoJ were employed off – the – record in efforts to disrupt and taint the Trump
campaign into abating any campaign operations.
The heretofore is an informal summary only of the fact patterns and details of Robert
Mueller’s official investigation. There are other Trump associates and fellow – officials
whose Washington, D.C., statuses have been affected by the attempts to taint and to
sully Donald J. Trump’s reputation, especially those dealing with the secret messages
and the fabricated “Steele Dossier”. There is a cast of characters including Trump
campaign donors, officials and other workers. Despite the tooth – and – nail pursuits of
McCabe and Comey, none of the charges against the Trump campaign can be verified
clearly and evidence itself, objective and independent, and verified by judicial people,
indicates the activities of the Trump campaign were and are all completely legal in what
concerns the institution of federal office, the American people, and the intentions and
friends of Americans and other proper stakeholders. Please pardon typographical errors.
The Yeltsin Reforms in Spirit Today, and

“Bandits&#82...
Saturday, April 07, 2018
PLEASE PARDON TYPOGRAPHICAL AND SPELLING ERRORS. CONDEMNATION

OF TERROR : BACKGROUND ON ALEKSANDR LITVINENKO AND WHAT WAS
BEHIND THE MYSTERY OF HIS DEMISE.
BLOWING UP RUSSIA : The Secret Plot to Bring back K.G.B. Terror, by Aleksandr
Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky (New York, Encounter Books, 2007). A. Litvinenko was a
middle – aged K.G.B. agent when he was imprisoned for not following through on order to
conspire in state – ordered business involving capital crime, and this with Boris
Berezhovsky at first, and then others as targets at the time. He served time in prison for
not following orders and related offenses, and died of a Polonium poisoning in November
2006. His circumstances, and situation before the state of the Russian Federation are at
“Novaya Gazeta”, including details about his career as a Lieutenant Colonel in the F.S.B.
Special anti – organized crime unit. This text as written and published by Litvinenko and
Felshtinsky brings into greater relief against the overall political and administrative picture
of the Russian Federation actual, factual stories of terrorism, state business in crime
activities, state relationships with crime brigades that are paid and used frequently; and
due to Litvinenko’s professional knowledge of and insight into this, he was driven from his
home country, at first with destination Tbilisi, for example, but then landing in Antalya,
Turkey and then eventually in London, U.K. Naturally, Mr. Litvinenko’s defective status in
his home country allowed for him and his close family to escape the regime there through
the Southern port of Sochi, and to board a boat onto the Black Sea to an outside near
neighbor, however more Western than the other bordering soviet – style countries.
Mr. Litvinenko entered into the prime of his career during the Yeltsin years that brought
about, or at least proposed many reforms to the country of the Russian Federation, and
that involved an entire litany of personalities, mostly from the former soviet organs in the
intelligence community thereof. While there was a fight FOR democratic reforms, there
was a simultaneous and more muted, due to Boris Yeltsin’s discretion, opposition by
those opposed to reform in Russia : Not all communists, and not all followers of the
oppositionist communist spokesman at the time, Vladimr Zhirinovsky and his associates.
During this time, the 1990’s in Russia, and though many, many cities in the former soviet
union are populous and very large and sophisticated in their own right, the “town and
country” relation between Moscow and Saint Petersburg became a point of emphasis,
especially since the Saint Petersburg siloviki in the day, many of them, are now in
ministerial bureaus in the country and have been for years. The list of the names of these
personalities is very long and this due to the way the highly bureaucratic politics and
administration in Russian Federation function, and really for the better of most of the
populace there, be they in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, or elsewhere.
Mr. Litvinenko, after his time in incarceration in Moscow, decided to depart the country
given the nature of the allegations against him and related sentence, and the way he was
treated in jail, of course, of which an assassination attempt in a security service prison.
This fact pattern would stir anyone up to make leaving a place easier and easier,
especially in Russia given the consequences for such secret people who stay around.
This, and because the F.S.B., successor to the long – storied K.G.B. spent much effort in
the 1990’s fomenting war in Chechnya, at least unrest and crime there as the major
pursuit of the people; bombings in the capitol and in provincial capitols and other, remote
areas from Moscow itself – all blamed on Chechen terrorists; sabotage of state assets
that was blamed on the Chechens, evading and conspiring to fool local city police in
Moscow and other towns; unnecessary purges of decent people from the intelligence
community through threats and criminal acts including capital crime; the creation of
F.S.B. “exercises” with destructive motives such as damaging, destroying and / or seizing
property including real property; sponsoring terrorist attack in places as Buinaksk,
Moscow, Volgodonsk, and in others such as the borders with Chechnya, Ryazan and
Samara. This also included F.S.B. purges against Russians, again in town and country;
special operations groups, or essentially crime brigades to do contract and planned,
organized crime work, including capital crimes, for hire, and as these brigades had been,
were and are used frequently, the same are quite well – paid and include neighborhood
Muscovites and sophisticated people from many parts of the country – well – educated
and well – trained. One major business for a while, especially in the Caucases, was
kidnapping and extortion (abductions).
This set of behaviors has not been without its open and well – versed and literate,
concise and internationally – know detractors as Mr. Litvinenko had been for some time
whence his assassination, again in November 2006. This, and even although actual
reform attempts at the K.G.B – F.S.B. have been infrequent and only isolated over time,
mostly due to the defeats in the war in the South, there have been some activities of
F.S.B. and Russian intelligence officials that are / were deemed unlawful and people,
officials were detected, really forced to admit to their wrongs, resign and retire. With this
in mind, and given the recent spate of expulsions of Russian spies from various places
including Moscow and Washington, D.C., the Russian Federation needs, absolutely
needs, a publicly referential and applicable, enforceable set of rules for, and that reform
the laws governing its secret services and organs of the state under charges of
wrongdoing. A statute, or set of rules somewhat detailed and involved to allow for
Russia’s unique structures and the number of organs, militarization and chain of
command, bureaucratization and so on, should have provisions for detection and
investigation and at the same time have inspections and promulgation procedures and
processes that would not vulgarize the Russian state [secret] bureaus and organs,
including that of its secret police, but that would orient the rightful compliance of these
organs away from the areas of, e.g., frequent, repeated and officially unrecognized and
violent conspiracies and plots, and other counter – productive devices and manipulations
that are state – syntonic but that have caused a large split between the state and its
history of decency toward every element of society and culture as well. Without this there
will continue this state – sponsored, and occasionally glaring and striking tyranny, and
with absolution but not admission from the center that has a history and continues to be
unpredictable and engaging in tyrannical, authoritarian, repressive and oppressive
strategy and tactics toward its people internally and then at least upon its near abroad.
The “Dismal” Science of Economics — I...

Thursday, April 12, 2018
INVESTIGATE THIS – THE IMF CHIEF AT BOAO FORUM CHINA, 2018.
As head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde this week made a
formalized presentation at 2018 Boao Forum in Hong Kong that addressed a number of
points on international trade only that by implication separate again and this after many
years of uniform policy, the regional economies with sustainability and others, essentially
wannabees in the continuing economic growth and development of world trade, world
economic finances and global economic values and overall wealth. Mme Lagarde, citing
a number of economic themes and principles, not buzz words nor really words in every
household, in talking of fiscal policy and responsibility, structural economic reforms,
workforce productivity, consumer welfare, especially that of poorer consumers and
women; the growth of fairer and more collaborative trade; a safer financial system that
supports further growth; further ubiquity of the digital revolution, the need for financial
stability on a more atomized level, not just regionally in Asia and other parts of the world;
the need for more and better housing and other questions.
One can find all these issues addressed, and Mme Lagarde’s speech did not address this
as integrated into her principles of her talk; in any traditional or orthodox books about the
post – GATT economic world. That is, the world of economics and how it affects
economies everywhere, macro – and microeconomic questions, since after WWII that
ended in the 1940’s, now some very memorable years ago. While it is important to
propound and to speak from the principles of GATT which is a well – intentioned and well
– integrated set of traditions, the mercantilism currently practiced by a number of
increasing and growing economic powers is of concern insofar as this destroys, not just
disrupts, but destroys economic structures that Mme Lagarde cites as in need of
regulatory reform and so on. One example of this in glaring terms is the policy of the
Russian Federation towards the near abroad that essentially has not changed since Cold
War days. One single change has been the seizure of Ukraine, and this is not exemplary,
but was expected for many years given the condition of Russians on that territory and the
overall Russian Federation domain in Ukraine that is long – standing : Gorbachev was
from Ukraine, etc.
Mme Lagarde also spoke of gaps in economic factors that are dooming different strata of
society to stagnation or to missing out on new economic growth or invention and
innovation and so on. This apparently included women in the Southern Hemisphere
regions, in the less – technological Asian countries, and other individuals who, given
technology or technologies available would help with productivity and other economic
indicators of the countries where they reside. Mme Lagarde went on to mention that
financial technologies and related activities have caused gaps due to their assessments
of financial and regulatory risk and resultant slowing of proper moneys to where they
need to go. Additional gaps were cited as between areas and resource allocation for
technological growth; transfers and trade. The overall automation of many Asian
countries was also cited along with the fact that most of the robots in the world are in
places like China, Japan and Republic of Korea though these countries are net importers
of technology and technology catalysts and other factors to maintain these and other
economic roles. Additional controls and regulation is needed apparently for intellectual
property with respect to these regional areas and their business and commerce –
economic considerations.
There are many reasons why Mme Lagarde’s speech in Hong Kong and this which
shows her leadership ideas and policies, present and future, in the interests of world
trade and public finances, and why these, probably by omission, do not address an
authoritative nor legitimate view of international trade, investments and money flows, and
other, related activities, probably for some years now. Why does not Mme Lagarde stick
to talking about current account balances and the policies behind what the trade
balances are? No mention in her talk was made of how currency values and reserves
greatly influence the reforms she spoke of and at the same time the world that hits the
news headlines each day is awash and mired in indebtedness, much of it unreported,
and debt that did not just come from outer space, but for some territories and regions is in
the stratosphere and without mention as to the actual liabilities of the debtors. The
haranguing of the establishment for reforms and harping on regulatory action are not
really appropriate policy internationally anymore, maybe since the end of the Cold War,
and the science, numerical – quantitative approaches as simply applied and slapped – on
international economics questions as an answer to complex and multi – faceted, even
countervailing and conflicted ideas about the way the world works remain unresolved and
have largely not really worked very well since about 1991. Mme Lagarde additionally
ignored this in this very important talk before many, many Asian officials and dignitaries.
There are other very cogent reasons, not strictly theoretical in nature and that relate to
basic economic values as preserved through time and as developed soundly since WWII,
why beating the economic growth models, regionally and internationally, flogging them
like as one would a dead horse, needs to change and the attack on proper business and
economics models, all legitimate and more, needs to stop in the name of social and re –
allocation policies and solutions that are extremely expensive and marginal at best in
their effectiveness. One such institution, long – suffering with respect to these
considerations that Mme Lagarde recognized nonetheless in her talk in Hong Kong this
week, is the system of taxation in many places about which much blather is spent and
this along with other economic considerations that characterize classical identities and
when applied and regarded appropriately produce better financial and economics results,
public and private, for all.
Please pardon typographical errors. Thank you.
Given German Reunification, Maastricht,

Decades of Change; but With...
Friday, April 20, 2018
JAMES DOBBINS AS U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT LIBERAL IDEALIST –

FOREIGNSERVICE : Five Decades on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy, (2017,
Brookings Institution – RAND).
If one reads text as this one seriously, and there are those who take the U.S. State
Department seriously and its stories and narratives, start first at the last chapter of this
book entitled “Reflections” that has James F. Dobbins as author self – described as an
analyst of conflict when in fact Mr. Dobbins, at least insofar as his story goes, was a great
organizer of different groups leading to conflict resolution or at least attempts thereupon
for many, many years starting with his first job in government in 1962, and through the
end of the Obama administration (2016). I did not read this book out of a need to know or
in order to find a text that talked about the State Department, nor to read what might be
construed as a self – promoting and self – aggrandizing autobiography by a behind – the
– scenes personality “who knew and knows everybody” who’s anyone from anywhere in
politics and government. I viewed an interview on television that spoke to conflict
resolution criteria whereas my own approach to such things depends upon getting
housekeeping and other chores done and trying to keep people happy, including the
neighbors who are completely different people than I would have them be at this time.
In the world of leviathan politics, Dobbins served to document models of conflict and then
(starting with the war in Viet Nam) proposing a remedy or solution or resolving
systemically and / or individually the conflict or dilemma that arose. From Viet Nam and
its chaos, essentially, the author examines the Nixon years, détente, the Reagan
presidency and the advent of the Gorbachev people and later figures; the presidencies of
Bush 41 and 43 and the public and very high – relief conflicts in the Middle East including
the Gulf War, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Clinton and Obama
administrations under which Dobbins served in the latter years of his career are father to
the thought of his own self – evaluation as an “analyst” : Conflicts and resultant solutions
to those in the Arab World, including Somalia; those in Latin America in origin and
emanating from Europe such as from Spain; the Kosovo and Bosnia conflicts and the
Serbs; the fractious and chaotic administration, however important to the U.S., of the
Island of Haiti; other Middle East and Africa subject matter and of course, the conflicts
that arose and have arisen over the years including the Far East. Also, while the State
Department since the Bush years has become more oriented to quantitative analysis and
economic and payoff considerations in nation – building and other missions, Dobbins
story dovetails with that of other recent accounts of people involved in these events over
a long time – the autobiographies of Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, even that of
Condoleezza Rice that is on a different level entirely than Cheney’s or Rumsfeld’s and
others. The text at hand here also peculiarly includes various illustrations of the military
(U.S.D.O.D., N.A.T.O., and various coalitions under the circumstances) re – enforcing the
Department of State in diplomatic and other missions and efforts. Narrator here was not
really aware of this under the circumstances before the Clinton and then Obama
presidencies, and might itself account for the disciplinarian view, even cynical view, many
Clinton people for starters have of the U.S. military.
The text begins with a very important premise that U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy in
the modern era are about change and adaptive politics and policy. This includes or
included the definition of nation – building under the Bush – Rice years and invites
illustrations of the role of the U.S. military in implementing or re – enforcing these policies.
The book also reads like the “Who’s Who” of American foreign politics and policy for the
past seventy years, and this level of narrative and illustration might have been a
convenient and effective way to include everyone as Mr. Dobbins appears to have done
along with his own story. The U.S. Department of State is one of the largest departments
in our federal government, and a department that uses and expends lots of resources
that include various and sundry budgetary and federal programs, USAID, the Veterans
Administration in part and other departments in part also, including the justice department
and various branches of the U.S. domestic and foreign security bureaus. Dobbins headed
one of these, by my reading of his narrative, no less than twice – the “European Bureau”
of the Department of State. Unlike other books I have read, named above and in addition
to Richard Bissel’s brief but very high impact autobiography, the Dobbins story is one of
success and hope – things that hardcore bureaucrats and seasoned diplomats
sometimes want to leave off the discussion table for fear of attracting the wrong kind of
attention, and because their listeners are attentive and pick up on their success models.
Here go right ahead. This read is a great read from the standpoint of it being a very
hopeful and in its last few pages, even spiritual guide to bland bureaucracy at the U.S.
foreign office. Despite one’s expectations in perhaps picking up a book by a diplomat, the
text is nor the bible nor a comic book. It examines the models of conflict from various
legitimate viewpoints for resolution including police and military resolution, executive
policy implementation, diplomacy, of course; international consensus through
organizations such as O.A.S. and the U.N. and others. Written, again, by a great
organizer involved with all these over the years, an outstandingly clear view of not how
nor why really, but the way the U.S. State Department has worked and continues its
mission in the postmodern environment of politics, policy, scientific and cultural, business
and commercial considerations, the cults of personalities, and many other factors
everywhere having to do with this commendable establishment and its place in foreign
relations on the public policy map. Great!
Please pardon typographical errors.
Pas Pour les Amateurs en Cherchant le Pouvoir.

Saturday, April 28, 2018
Multilateralism — Mount Vernon, Virginia — EQUIPE.
EMMANUEL MACRON – SPEECH TO A JOINT SESSION OF THE UNITED STATES

CONGRESS, APRIL 25, 2018.
“From the very beginning”, noted Emmanuel Macron in his speech on Wednesday, April
25, 2018, the United States and France have shared a “common vision for humanity”, of
“liberty, tolerance and equal rights”. These humanistic, in fact for their time very visceral,
bold ideas have endured given the exemplary lives of people associated with them :
Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire, the Marquis de Lafayette, and others up to today who include
Emmanual Macron and Donald Trump. The Macron’s welcomed the Trumps to France in
July 2017 for the Bastille Day celebrations in France, and the Trumps have invited and
hosted the Macrons on the first official state visit of the 45 th American President, now in
April 2018. U.S. – France relations are stronger than ever. From the times of World War I
and World War II, against the Nazis, and today against world wide terrorism, given the
chaos of international political life, again, relations between the two countries are never
stronger. France greatly recognizes as well, and from the past to today, to the courage
and devotion of American troops, especially those still living, from the battles and fighting
of the Second World War.
Our world has greatly changed due to the 9 / 11 terrorist attacks that were devastating
and terrible for the U.S. and its friends. Many nations have suffered due to the terrorist
acts of 9 / 11 given their values and principles, the price for freedom and democracy, and
they continue to suffer terrorist threats since 2001. The thing that is so puzzling, noted
Macron in his talk, is the fact there are nations and peoples who would destroy us
completely, who would destroy freedom and democracy and all and everything about it.
We all love the mottos of the keepers of freedom that include a love of freedom, trust and
democracy. The unfinished business related to this, the U.S. and the French Republic
need to work together to advance the lights of freedom everywhere with a legacy from
personalities such as Martin Luther King, James Baldwin and Richard Wright, Simone de
Beauvoir (especially on gender equality), and others. There is a deep resonance of the
ideas and lives of these personalities in France and in America also, from Seattle to New
Orleans and other places along with a capacity to see the future about the society and
culture of tomorrow. More examples of personalities with a legacy or exchanges between
the U.S. and France include the life and influences of Thomas Jefferson, Ernest
Hemingway and his “Movable Feast”, Chateaubriand, William Faulkner, and the Blues
from New Orleans (Jazz from Mississippi), sports and visual arts, innovation, science and
the endless dialogue of a common dream including jobs, and more scientific and cultural
exchanges, etc.
“This is us” says Macron, in a very special relationship based upon dignity, and progress
and based again on the dictum of Roosevelt that freedom must be husbanded and
handed on : “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction”, a phrase
that extends beyond bilateral ties in which there is now a call to succeed and by
remembering our values and principles : Values that are at risk given the new threats and
challenges of the 21 st century in an unknown new and future world order with issues and
questions that turn on things like the environment and children, the questions themselves
and doubts about democracy – Macron calls us to “stand and fight for these principles”!
He went on to mention that democracy is the best answer to the challenges of today and
the international community needs fundamental and joint actions, including those of the
U.S. and France, action based on our mutual values against inequalities, dangers to our
planet, left – liberalism, and questions about the globe that include criminal and rogue
states, global threats and the futures of these. In discussing these, Macron stated that
much of our reluctance concerning these questions has to do with fear, and “there is
nothing to fear, but fear itself”, a phrase from Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Macron discusses two ways ahead for France and the U.S., their friends and allies :
Isolation – a condition that would be temporary only and that for which the world will not
stop in its risks and threats, etc. Rather, he says, let us overcome the dangers right in
front of us, let us keep our eyes wide for these and continue to use our power to
advocate against the suppression of freedoms and against nationalism. Our institutions
otherwise will die and lose their mandate if the threat of left – liberalism is allowed any
primacy.
We can shape the world order, strengthen cooperation and multilateralism where cultures
are to be respected, protected and preserved in one world but with dominance by no one,
but more than one. With this in mind we must defend and promote our values of
democracy and shared liberty in the face of the disorders of the world. Macron presents a
laundry list of issues of which rights and values, education, faith and trust, culture,
medicine and science all are and can be employed against threats to liberty and global
threats against individual freedom and responsibility and the rights of all, and in this
everyone is able to pursue their dreams. His talk discussed much more, including the
positive effects of market economics, nationalism and overregulation, the onerous nature
of commercial wars, computers and technology and their role in identity, privacy and
personal and property protection; the reduction of inequalities; working toward a planet
we will be proud to leave to our children; more politics and policy between us and before
us, … ; associations to save the planet; countering terrorist propaganda; the efforts
against nuclear proliferation; the various U.S. and French positions on questions that
might differ. Macron further proposed a plan to face and to overcome mutual challenges
and fears that includes recognizing proper current international agreements; considering
the post 2025 period for all; militarism as a consideration; and monitoring of the results on
resolution of various questions. Our modern relations – the U.S. and France – in 2018 as
formalized by Charles de Gaulle in 1960, together as the U.S. and France are now more
intense than ever, and there is much in what we might accomplish together that is driven
by the call of the progress of humanity, high ideals, trust and lofty goals that are shared.
In pursuing this with determination and courage, and with what we love in danger; we
have choices, and given the faith in each other and in ourselves, we shall prevail. Vive [la
France et vive LES ETATS – UNIS]! An outstanding and memorable speech. Great!
As Your Wheels Touch the Pavement … .

Wednesday, May 02, 2018
TWELVE TALKING POINTS ON BUDDHISM. The Encyclopedia of Buddhism, by Robert

E. Buswell and Donald S. Lopez (2014, Princeton University Press). See Also, Lopez,
Buddhism in Practice (Princeton).
a. Siddartha : The personal name of Gautama Buddha a prince of royal birth, issue of the
king Suddhodara. Siddhartha was a prince in the practice of asceticism and had several
similar names, all of which signified “he who achieves his goal”. After his achievement of
Buddhahood, nirvana, etc., he was known as Gautama, Sakyamuni; or Tathagata.
SIDDHARTHA, additionally a 1922 novel by Hermann Hesse with Siddartha buddha as
protagonist.
b. Maitreya (Ajita) : “The benevolent one”, and the next buddha, now in heaven as a
bodhisattva awaiting final rebirth, descent to earth, and a myth of myths insofar as his
arrival from tusita heavan; symbol of transitory teachings of the Buddha and Buddhism of
which the dharma and of the forgetting of the teachings of the Buddha to be reprised
upon his arrival; and the new teachings along with the comportment of Maitreya to
replicate the deeds of Sakyamuni. To be born in India and to re – establish Buddhism
anew after some interminable time of the progressively slow dying of buddhist teachings
after Sakyamuni. Belief in Maitreya follows the mainstream of Mahayana Buddhism and
is the basis for the development of bodhisattva worship with bodhisattva as redeemer
and rescuer. The cult of Maitreya within Buddhism grew as buddhism traversed India,
then to China, Souteast Asia and the island countries, North Asia and Japan. Maitreya is
a symbol of a deity looking after the poor by feeding them, and many Chinese restaurants
have a likeness of this cult figure.
c. Dharma : Difficult, very difficult term to translate but that loosely means “element”,
though this term as used might have ten or more meanings, more or less, in the
literature. The overall significance of Dharma is the sacrifice and suffering that maintain
the order and balance of the cosmos. Indian kings in ancient times used the Dharma to
promulgate and to implement their policies within their realms. Dharma is a related genre
of Hindu literature versus its role in buddhism. The term again, while referred to as “law”
sometimes in translation, is the same, more or less for the Chinese as others, and
encompasses the signified terms “teachings”, “doctrines”, buddhist and non – buddhist.
The Buddha speaks of the Dharma in his search for truth as taught by and received from
his teachers, of which the following two items : 1. The Buddha sermon “Turning the
Wheel of the Dharma” has to do with what he taught disciples, and in addition to this
Dharma contains the rules of buddhist monastic discipline, of which three refuges for
Buddhists – Dharma, the Buddha and community. 2. The term also means “to hold”,
having to do with holding one back or blind from adversities and falling into suffering. The
Dharma is scriptural, and teachers of the Dharma have knowledge of the realized
Dharma; and secondly the Dharma touches upon the elements of our existence, or
“phenomenon”. “All dharmas… [are] without self”. The Dharma of the Buddha refers to
his qualities such as teaching; the physical, verbal, mental, transitoriness and
transcendence. A part of elemental, doctrinaire buddhism is mostly encompassed by the
Mahayana school of buddhism and its and other teaching; and given the degree of belief
in Buddism and Mahayana, the true Dharma is to appear after some interminable time (~
500 years) after the death of the buddha.
d. Bodhidharma : Was a monk from India who developed “Chan” or Chinese Buddhism –
first patriarch of the medieval “China” school, starting with the reception of Buddhism in
South China during the 5th and 6th centuries (CE), of which the Wu and Liang dynasties.
e. Bodhisattva : The term signifies “enlightenment being” for lack of better definition, and
signifies for the individual who has attained enlightenment and resolved to become a
buddha through Buddhahood. The rule on the actual religiosity of this varies according to
buddhist sect.
f. Karman (Karma) : Buddhist doctrine of action and / or “fruition”. By the karma, virtue
and the like leads to future happiness; wrongdoing has non – virtuous speech and deeds
leading again to suffering. There are various official interpretations difficulties with the
Vedic school and others, and there is a monastic karma.
g. Brahma : god, who, prompted to preach to others on buddhism and Gautama the
Buddha. Brahma is an Indian divinity adopted by Buddhists as protector of scriptures and
teachings of buddhism. A meditation teacher. The Brahma has different mythical roles in
the teachings of the buddha. The Brahma has four faces and four arms and other
attributes include the vision of the lotus flower and cakras in various rites and
ceremonies.
h. Silk Road : The “Silk Road” is a geographer’s invention from Baron Ferdinand von
Richter, and can be described as a camel caravan route through Central Asia and
connected to China, India, Syria and the old Roman Empire. The connection to Asia is to
the Empire of China and had and has to do with silk cloth, spices, livestock, perfumes,
precious metals, and ceramics among other goods and materials. The Silk Road on the
old network stretches from Guandong to the Mediterranean and developed as buddhism
became more well – known and well – received in Asia. Sites along the Silk Road include
those within India, China, Tibet, Mongolia and elsewhere in East Asia and on the Central
Asian steppe.
i. Sambhala (Shambhala) : A region in the doctrine of Theosophy in the West; inspiration
for the mythical and mysterious “Shangri – La”, Sambhala is a mythical Himalayan
kingdom north of the Nepalese Himalayas and its territory is shaped in the form of a giant
lotus with lakes and sandalwood forests in remote areas that are surrounded by massive,
snowy peaks; and with a gilded capitol, “Kalana”. The people of Sambhala are beautiful,
intelligent, wealthy, virtuous and good in all ways and in all things, and many obtain
Buddhahood during their lifetimes. Sambhala has embattled barbarians who are from
Islam and who are the antithesis of its people. In the literature, the Panchen Lama is
supposedly the king of Sambhala.
j. Major Schools of Buddhism : There are thirty or more major schools of Buddhism of
which the “Mahanaya”, and the others under the rubric of “Hinanayana” schools in turn
that encompass the Pharmagupta, the Mahasamghika, the Mahisaka, Sarvastivada,
Sthariranikaya; and others. Buddhist schools are also classified within buddhism as
“Nikaya” or “Sravakayana” schools.
k. Nirvana : Literally in the Sanskrit – “extinction”, the soteriological goal of the buddhist
path. This has primarily to do with extinguishing and purging of the bad humeurs, or
“three poisons” or primary afflictions : a. greed and sensuality; b. hatred and aversion;
and c. delusion and ignorance. Nirvana signifies the cessation of these and the cessation
of concern, involvement and / or presence to these in the mind and of the body. In
nirvana, rebirth ceases and body and mind are soon emptied of the poisons. This
signifies for many the completion of the path of buddhism. See also the four noble truths
of buddhism in the Buddha sermon “Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dharma”.
l. Dala Lama : Honorific title for the incarnation of the buddha in Tibet, the Dalai Lama is
revered as an earthly bodhisattva a. of compassion and b. for the protection of Tibet and
now in modern times its outside region. The incarnate and holders of that bloodline live
incarnate as, e.g., the Dalai Lama who, outside Tibet is often cited as the head of Tibetan
(sect) of Buddhism, or again as the “Throneholder of the Ganden Monastery”.
m. See more in the Encyclopedia of Buddhism, by Buswell and Lopez (2014).
“The Medicine of Movement” … .

Monday, May 28, 2018
Do a minimal walk.
THE SCIENCE OF EXERCISE, BY VARIOUS (TIME – LIFE PUBLISHERS, 2018).
Unlike many exercise books, this edition of the same sort of text that one finds
everywhere books are found, including at libraries, this text addresses the overall issue of
exercise and what it means for everyone from couch potatoes to iron men. The text also
addresses nutritional and other ancillary questions that have to do with supporting the
exercise routine itself. The premise of the text is based upon an approach to resistance
training, jogging, walking, and more from the standpoint of health, not of motivation, nor
strictly routines for competition and the like; and accomplishing one’s health and exercise
/ activities goals using the routine as part of the overall medical and scientific schema of
one’s health overall. This is what captivates and makes the text interesting throughout.
Exercising, in whatever form, from crawling and walking to the most heavy forms of
endurance and heavy interval loads on the musculoskeletal, has benefits for everyone
who starts an exercise routine and sticks with it. Among these tangible and otherwise
imperceptible benefits, at least on the face of it and at first – a longer, healthier life; lower
health care costs overall; better sleep regimes; a more productive and satisfying work
day; better personal emotional equilibria and reducing one’s risk and upping one’s return
against chronic disease. By the premise of this text, exercise ceases to be a disease
“avoidance” or “sick care” device – it is against disease, yes, and preventive; medicinal in
value against sickness; reduces costs of caring for sickness and enhances one’s well –
being.
The text includes very informative and again captivating writings, chapters, especially by
Jordan Metzl, a New York, NY, fitness guru who cites studies from “The Lancet”, cancer
studies, diabetes and brain health writings in his very important introductory segue to the
“everyone can exercise” theme here. To exercise and to have fun at it, one does not
need to have a career at weights, jogging, gymnastics or whatever. A little exercise and
then building on that derives great benefits all things remaining equal and otherwise the
benefits of even a little exercise go a long way. U.S. federal standards based on many,
many studies indicate that 30 – minute exercise sessions that elevate the heart rate and
burn extra calories are warranted five times a week – standard. What does this mean? All
of it adds to 150 minutes a week of brisk walking, jogging and similar activities; at least to
begin with. Some exercise routines and their participants do more than walking –
resistance training, interval training, running and agility routines, sprinting “heats”, “sets”
and the like. If you get into a routing and like the idea of more exercise, look for literature
and diet, methodology and directions from your fellow exercisers about these and from
trainers themselves. Remember, nearly everyone can add more exercise first to a routine
and then to their lives. See Dr. Metzl’s “Iron Strength” and other fitness classes for adults,
etc., that have taken place for over seven years successively now. These sessions
started in – house with his exercise room to over 1 , 000 regular and elite participants
today, and this in only seven years.
There are methods, Metzl cites, that fit for young ones all the way through life’s scales to
the older, even elderly fit. Some keys ages in this trajectory for different exercise routines
might be 10 years of age, then 42, then 71 years old. Getting in shape does not have to
be painful nor overly – expensive, and once you start, keep doing it; it’s social and fun or
at least it can be; and exercise is good for you personally and builds a sense of
community within the exercise arena or organization / group where routines are followed
and take place.
For the future, medicine will hopefully catch up with the methodology and research on the
subject that has basic parameters from temperature (body), pulse, blood pressure,
respiration, “step count” and the like that should (again in the future) be included on any
and every exercise, health and medical chart for health care. Currently, society as we
know it spends $ 3 trillion a year, more or less, on health care and healthy exercise and
routine “workouts” are markedly, noticeably, and proven to be preventive against disease
and the ensuing chaos of that and the expenses in time and money, first and then in
other currencies, of regaining one’s health from the disease and / or contagion. In the
U.S., age expectancy at around 79 years of age is forty – third in the world – a disgrace
for an advanced and industrial, commercially, economically and socially modern, even
postmodern nation.
Metzl’s intensive and very well – worded first chapter to the book is followed by other very
capturing and captivating narrative on the technical and other details of exercise routines
and sporting pursuits for Americans. Remember that most health statistics, for what this
is worth, indicate that inactivity and sedentary states over the long – term are very low –
yield in preserving good health. The sedentary and inactive lifestyle can evidently and
observably worsen one’s health in calling on various maladies that include vulnerabilities
to arthritis, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease and early death. Remember as
well that routines including 1 / 2 hour per workday, or 150 minutes per week go far in
many, many ways to expel the body, and the mind from the grasp of extended sedentary
and sordid body states, morbidity, and any factors caeteris paribus that would cause or
will cause one’s health to decline or worsen over time. A Great, great and very healthy,
healthful and even cheery read.
Latest in U.S. Politics (2016 “[Polytheistic] Book

of Num...
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
THE DEEP STATE, by Mike Lofgren (2016, Viking Press)
While the current narrator is not an expert in political books, one must know at this point,
given the ethereal and mystical aura and terms bandied about concerning the “Deep
State” in America, and that there is not just one deep state among all countries, this
cookbook of various anecdotes, names, rumors, and other literary vignettes and verbose
illustrations has to do with the “Alice in Wonderland” legacy of the last DNC
administration and then its antecedents during the mid – to – late 1990’s. In part,
inventions even such as the DNC definitions of the deep state, and Michael Lofgren
appears as a liberal author under the circumstances speaking about his own friends,
party associates and the liberal society and political register in the U.S. right now going
back maybe to the Carter years; are magical in nature, perhaps more varietal and
nebulous than the way communists had used “the dialectic” during the Cold War – this
was for a long time, and thus at least the images and notion, concept or concepts of the
deep state are here for a while. Such imagery evokes liberal and other world intrigues
and an aura of the unknown even about such characters illustrated as under the umbrella
of the deep state, but probably who personally do not ascribe to it – people as Donald
Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, and other members of the staid and long – lived
conservative Washington, D.C., group of political figures.
Despite the rough going of the first paragraph here in the description overall of the text by
Lofgren, as the book reads beyond the Introduction and first chapter, terms, written
illustrations and other prose become even more magical and difficult to read – like an
attempt, however stilted sometimes, of a modern novel directly duplicating the classics.
The writing has no referential theme nor idea throughout the rest of the text, yet through
which the writer – author makes a serious attempt to describe the pot – ridden and even
crack – ridden ranks of U.S. liberal politics as a new “establishment”. This is cause for
worry given that such prose has a legitimate message, though the pattern of the way this
comes out in the book has one wondering what the author might actually do with his
great talent for writing – commenter here has had some economics texts that were written
for communists to read in examining and reviewing capitalist markets and the like – many
new investments texts are this way and concentrate on “scores”, investment “metrics”
and the like, things that investment managers only really know what to do with, and that
day traders frequently and substantively abuse, for example. What does this mean, for
example, for the common reader? The text by Lofgren here was probably written not to
sell to everyone, and in the way it is set down on each page, the author might be applying
for a presidential speech – writing job, or that for a Congressman, Senator or Justice,
other high official or even a foreign king. Without bombast, the voice of the author in this
book talks directly to the executive and legislative branches of government in the U.S.
and anywhere for that matter that deep states exist.
There are many factors that influence politics in Washington, D.C., and again another
very many ways to illustrate and talk of these to make them palatable and more easily
understandable to everyone. The presence of factors in this text to elevate and raise a
hue and cry about the nebulous, again, yet very much established contra – state; the
state of ultra – liberal refusal – at – all – costs politics against the progression the country
is in right now toward a future, economic, political, socially and so on, with great
redeeming ideals and goals, are pulled from contexts that are indubitably critical to
understand U.S. politics today, and for example, in places like Trenton, New Jersey, and
Oklahoma City, OK, versus San Francisco, CA. The relations between regions of our
country as bounded by borders and territorial and regional importance politically and
economically are arising from a fitful torpor of state and corporate welfare for a long time
for some, and then heated activities and productivity in others that has driven social
policy the wrong way and has what for many is a telling effect upon and an obstacle to
potentialities for further accord and internal unity and teamwork between political figures,
again, and their respective regions and urbanizations, districts, precincts and households
everywhere within the fifty states. This torpor had affected the economic climes on Wall
Street for some time and has wishy washy computer programs slashing and banging
around the securities and commodities markets – this is important to understand from a
point of view of the social policies of the deep state writ large and the doomsayers in the
woodwork who want to flatten New York, NY, and other urban areas; classing them as
“crack” and ‘crank’ dens and other vice – ridden agglomerations which they are not. The
creation of the values, or the recalling of the values that have built (and not an empire as
some would have it) a powerful democracy in America, have directly invited the
mysticism of the deep state as a self – referential political environment for careerists in
liberal and even in corruptive leftist causes, many of whom have educated themselves
and who belong to corrupted and corruptive “clubs” – remember again the media
production “The Firm” from years ago starring the great Hollywood actor Tom Cruise – a
great simulative depiction of what Lofgren presents as elements of the deep state and
why civic awareness and party politics and the business of the executive, legislative and
judicial and associated and related activities are increasingly important from the platforms
of the different parties and political groups and voter – participants (parties) – politicians
at the same time. Get it?
Brief Analysis of the Yuan Policy Right Now.

Okay?
Monday, June 25, 2018
P.R.C. Monetary Policy and the Cosmology of Carl Sagan : “Billions and Billions”
Forget the devaluation of cryptocurrencies for the time being and particularly of Bitcoin in
the overall scheme of international and Asian monetary policy and just remember that
Carl Sagan knew the universe is full of chaos, yet that it was blessed by wonderful
rationality and symmetry in the way “billions and billions” of different stellar and galactic
and inter – galactic systems were found to share the space of the overall universe and
despite the ideas of novas, super novas, black holes and other gigantic phenomena and
cataclysms, explosions that created the heat and light in the ether of space. Though the
international currency markets and related markets are not a multi – infinite ether of
economic and financial spaces, happenings and phenomena; though the currency and
other markets are subject to pursuing the actual value of capital as it exists and has been
built by organized, deliberate, fair and fair – going efforts of business and industry,
monetary policy and other factors. It is not a sin to have good economics and economic
potentialities in one’s area of the world and to have an economic lead as created by
enterprising and creative, good business and financial people.
The world has things in it, things granted, but the creation of those things and their value
has to do more with the value of hard – working and creative, imaginative, and results –
oriented, real people who participate in economic activities for gain. This is an identity
that has been ignored to a large extent by statistic – toting labor economists who would
have the U.S. and Western countries give up their economic and other gains, the
economic leads they have gained and developed constructively and fairly over time, to
other economic entities and geographic sectors without regard to what is lost when
capital flies or when economic and financial concentrations are made to change apart
from the reality of well demonstrated supply and demand microeconomics and corporate
financial policy, and then in the workings of the invisible hand over world markets that
allows for organized and well – informed markets, though due to asymmetries created by
ambitious, read over – ambitious econonomic actors still results in part in boom and bust
and “bubble” – type business cycles.
What does this mean for the P.R.C. and for the decision of the Bank of China to continue
essentially dumping billions and billions of dollars as debt offerings for industry and for
small business, and this depending upon economic sectoral issues and questions of the
day at the time the money is offered. The market for credit and the currency markets are
more complicated than, at least for the current author here, mention the straight equity
markets that have to do with ownership. Some debt models use options theory and there
are quantitative models for monetary policy and the like that target currency values and
project business conditions given what goes into the model, the economics and business
elements involved and then results desired given different sensitivities. During the 1970’s
in the consumer goods market and in some other areas such as steel, the Japanese
economy would again dump product that was quite valuable to them but that had no
chance of selling out at home. The economics and its managers in Japan called for
exporting (risky business itself again) goods far away around the globe to undercut
similar product abroad, first to get the attention as to the high quality and cheap prices of
the goods and then later to gather and then capture product market share based upon
differential prices of Japanese goods. This made lots of people upset and many an
epidemic of anger and gastroenteritis among Western business people and economists
who comprehended the dumping as predatory and unfair, intended to capture market
share unfairly and the results of Japanese over – production in Japan. The Bank of China
has very large financial reserves in most every important currency including dollars and
Euros, and emitting these reserves to attempt to, at least in the signaling of the offering of
these reserves and their proxies for this, control or to influence upward the value of the
Yuan and its rate or rates of return compared to the dollar and the U.K. Pound is a
question. Then the Euro and dollar effect is an expensive effort to allow for slack in
Chinese economic activities and to influence dollar and Euro and other currency values in
Western Europe – U.K. and the Americas (markedly in the U.S., a large P.R.C. trading
partner) before the Chinese Yuan. One might mention this bright idea and effort as an
invitation to “Shang hai” the economies and at least one or more economic sectors in
Central and Western Europe, U.K. and the Americas. Under the circumstances and in
theory, one can do lots of economic damage with small percentages here and with one
betting or speculating on the Yuan and the Asian currencies pegged or following it. The
“billions ‘n billions” that P.R.C. plans to emit this week in the financial area and the
corresponding Yuan rate cut have the appearance of jabbing at the value of Western
currencies overall and indirectly chipping away at Western capital as held in financial
institutions. The drama that unfolds on Monday when the debt is offered to various
financial takers will be interesting in that Western banks, at least some of them, might be
poised to lend even more than P.R.C., and this remains to be seen. This might not even
affect the spot nor interim strength of the dollar but this might sooner or later affect dollar,
Euro and U.K. currency rates. Carl Sagan certainly spoke of this effect of “billions and
billions” in scientific terms of physics and then cosmology, and the quantities and
magnitude of what is happening here are staggering, though Sagan imagined a world at
peace, and the trade war with its misunderstandings and the clipping activities of the
Bank of China, proverbially speaking, in this debt offering and in other ventures might
backfire the “Shang hai” efforts. Having policy set, in P.R.C. and resultant policy outside
Asia, for currency and currency values as determined by almost purely quantitative
considerations apart from getting goods to consumers and producers who need materials
to make things, is against even the “New Silk Road”, “New Economic Order – Belt and
Road”, proper trading terms and even the “Three Represents” of Shang hai fame, and
other open and more free – market policies of the P.R.C. right now despite declarations
its money activities are Yuan – neutral.
Correctness, Ideology, Politics, Human Drama —
Communism ...
Kennedy Illustrating a Point — Probably at the Vienna Summit.
WORLD WAR BY WORLD WAR, THEN COLD WAR.
KHRUSHCHEV : THE MAN – HIS ERA, by William Taubman (2017, Simon and
Schuster)
First and foremost, this biographical text of over 500 pages is irreducible, and is nor a tale
of Dickens nor of Henry Fielding in all the dramatic and treacherous fiction of those
biographical stories (“Oliver Twist” and the latter, author of “Tom Jones”). The narrative
itself is expertly annotated and with a very valuable bibliographical listing and other
documentation. The photos the text features as well depict and further the goal of Dr.
Taubman who attempts by an examination of the life of N. Khrushchev not only to allow
the reader some insight into the man who led Russia / U.S.S.R. for a long time, first in the
leadership as Stalin’s party assistant, and then as party chairman (1953 – 1964); and
allowing the reader again to examine the times of N. Khrushchev overall from birth in
1894 until his passing in September 1971. The text also places the former soviet union as
a country, and the personalities of its various leaders and committee and party heads,
within the broader context of a global view of this and its relation to Western society.
There is one issue of this very well – written and insightful, informative, even fun book to
have read : The text is not about royalty, nor about a royal family nor major bloodlines of
any sort. For this reason, the book at first picking it up, might not seem sensible for
anyone wanting to read about Princess Margaret or even Rasputin for that matter.
In basic historical analysis, there are two un – opposing models that social and human
scientists traditionally use to examine historical events and the like : One is a sociological
view that supports lots of details over a long time before a very large permutation or
event, or series of events over a short interval of years. Another way to examine history,
again using a traditional perspective, has to do with the doings and acts, actions and
ideologies and philosophies, character and other features of those in individual roles in
history. In every time period of this nature, there are people who warrant in their lives and
the ways they lived, and within the context of greater society and then world society, an
important significance of interest to the academician who teaches history or to the reader
who is interested in the subject matter, topic at hand and the like. Might I suggest that the
psychological – scientific approach of William Taubman to the life of Nikita Khrushchev
presents another model that makes for greatly interesting reading, captivating and all
meaningful in the scientific approach of the author to his narrative in this biography. The
first two ways of going about a Khrushchev biography, given the complexities of the man,
his overt communism, the communists as his followers and communist regime he ruled
and so on, would not bring out an adequate and modern depiction of the person. What is
interesting in the way the book is written, by far much better than any Khrushchev book,
is the plot of Mr. Khrushchev’s life is thoroughgoing from stem to stern and no loose ends
– the research completed to bind this story into a book deserves a major award in and of
itself.
I have not been to the Kremlin, I am not of Russian extraction nor do I speak Russian
very well, though I do remember consciously two things about growing up American in
the nuclear age when Mr. Khrushchev and his colleagues were alive – the Berlin subject
matter was so vital to both U.S. and USSR people given the stakes of the world war and
cold war, international prestige and things like open doors to economic development and
trade, not to mention the very valuable real estate in some places; that people were
constantly worried there might be a new blockade, then a battle in Central Europe that
would turn nuclear within minutes. This rationale had the soviets launching their rockets
in a first strike after their troops crossing the German border entered Berlin or Berlin
vicinity. The logic of the day had retaliatory strikes as ineffective in a nuclear exchange.
The other concerns were around things like the Cuban missile crisis and nuclear wars
fought from boats in the oceans, though this is not a real issue within Khrushchev’s
makeup and background overall – the Russians have always pretty much had a good
flotilla – but he was a member of the Red Army and the Russian navy did not really
change the course of history under Stalin and Khrushchev the way it could in other times.
Khrushchev in a way grew up in an environment and aura of terror, torture and vicious
surprise, and he apparently enjoyed seeing people terrorized, fearful, scared, startled and
shockingly surprised. Combined with the single issue of our worries at night of old and
nuclear terror, and then who the symbols of this sort of thing were that had us insomniac
about it; this narrative again examines completely one such agent to everyone of this set
of possibilities around nuclear conflict : Khrushchev the man and who he was.
The book itself is also not just “Khrushchev, Khrushchev, Khrushchev, … “, and it speaks
to the reader about the man’s family and associates, his friends, and internal enemies,
his political, social and economic, moral and social policy ideas and efforts that worked
so well for their time. It shows, in fact, a communist leader, important in his own
geographical hemisphere and so on, in a communist – model world where capitalism and
its characteristics are base, evil and to be damned; and by a gifted and reasonable,
rational portraitist in the author who shows us the general hubris of the soviet leadership
despite the rhetoric and how Khrushchev himself grew aged in high office and whose
path into ignominy was provoked by this and the forever his friends and party infighting
and jostling for leadership roles. An excellent book.
Neither Dove Nor Hawk — Cold War “Owl”

THE KREMLINOLOGIST, by Jenny Thompson and Sherry Thompson (2018, Johns
Hopkins)
Born in New Mexico, in Lincoln County in 1904, Llewellyn Thompson grew to be at the
center of the developments of the Cold War from its inception given the Stalin policy
speech in February 1946 to reinforce soviet influence and expansion among “buffer zone”
states in Eastern Europe and other events near in time that marked the start of this
ideological and very pitched undeclared and wasteful conflict between the forces of
capitalism and communism, each in sanctity in and of itself and demonizing the other. Mr.
Thompson got himself through college at University of Colorado and then was posted to
Southeast Asia by the State Department, he then followed a not – so – circuitous route to
the land of the soviets through the Office of European Affairs and then Moscow in 1941.
During the war, and this is where his story is captivating as it is full of such details : the
only way really to get to Moscow from the States was through Siberia that started for
incoming Americans at the port of Vladivostok. He was a secretary to American
ambassador to the USSR Lawrence Steinhardt. The story of Thompson’s life takes many
twists and turns starting with the posting to Moscow that began just as the Germans were
attacking the Soviet Union in 1941. Most of the soviet government in touch with the
Americans moved to Kuibyshev, and other locations as well. The war was to get on a
better footing for the Russians when the siege of Moscow was lifted and the Germans
turned back from Stalingrad as well. Churchill and other world leaders came to Moscow
to sort out Eastern Europe after the war with Josef Stalin. These details and others were
outlined in Thompsons State Department essay of 1944 entitled “Soviet Foreign Policy,
… “. By 1945, Stalin was the only remaining of the original “Big Four” and thus Stalin
dictated and cajoled other leaders at post – war conference(s) to his own ends while
continuing his despotic and somewhat disorganized political behavior at home, continuing
to purge people who were a threat to him, doing away with the war liberalizations, and so
on.
The world balance of power versus a universalism in politics and policy called for
increased recognition of a divided world between ideologies, capitalism and communism
and North and South, rich and poorer countries. This was exemplified in the advantages
created by and the overall benefits of the Marshall Plan that invited the soviet Molotov
Plan in the USSR. The Molotov Plan assured the dominion of soviet communism among
satellite states and the Marshall Plan was a four – year U.S. program to rebuild Europe
and related regions and institutions using American cash. It was at this time that
Thompson met and fell in love with Jane Monroe, his bride – to – be in 1948. 1948 was
also the year U.S. secret operations were instituted after the National Security Act of
1947. Given the new spying of the Americans, the soviet proposed many things to cut off
Berlin and presumably to strangle the city economically to have it fall into the domain of
Eastern Europe under East German rule. The Western Europeans had many fears
around the status of Berlin, the G.D.R. and the status of Germany as a whole and NATO
served, by its formation and purposes to be used in defense of Western Europe, to
assuage the basic fears involved post – war. The soviets exploded a nuclear device and
joined the nuclear club thereby in 1949, and Thompson by this era was headed toward a
post in Austria where he was American ambassador starting in 1952, and who was given
the assignment of looking into and resolving the status of occupying soviet forces and
Austrian sovereignty. It was also during this time that George Kennan’s famous “X –
article” appeared in “Foreign Affairs” magazine that put the U.S. leadership on a Cold
War footing. Austria became a sovereign country again in 1955 and the soviets left in
1958.
The text is full of these sorts of very interesting historical details and proceeds to discuss
the Eisenhower and Kennedy regimes in depth and the role of soviet expansionism as a
worry in both, soviet intransigence in addition to that as well. The book covers the original
OPEN SKIES agreement proposed at Geneva in the 1950’s, the Hungary and Suez
crises, the changes of regime from IKE to Kennedy, to the Johnson people, then to Nixon
and forward from there. The text also reads as a “Who’s Who” of the Cold War (1947 –
1989 [sic]). The relationship between New York, not necessarily D.C. and Moscow
illustrated and the importance of Moscow in the Cold War perspective of this text is
greatly increased versus places such as Saigon / Hanoi, Laos, Beijing, Paris, Bonn,
Havana, Berlin (again), Sverdlovsk (where Gary Powers plane was downed), and even
Leningrad (later changed back to be called Petrograd), and others. Numerous, numerous
other stories are discussed in compact and concise ways : The Cuban Missile Crisis, the
SALT talks, the Viet Nam and Southeast Asian conflicts; Greece, North Africa, the Middle
East. Excellent background reading for the current events of the 1990’s for example and
full of the names of bureaucrats and their institutions that changed the world for much the
better as it is to – day. Most of the text one will find is steady – as – she goes – type
reading, and the course of Thompson’s life is heavily weighted to important events of the
Khrushchev and Brezhnev soviet times, the apogee of that experimental empire. A great
read with an objective, real, and interesting plot. Great!
“WALL STREET JOURNAL” BOOK REVIEW.
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