To get us back on track...
http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Trea...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312600822&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Trea...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312600822&sr=1-1
Recommend Political Books You Think Everybody Should Read Here
- Thread starter Damocles
- Start date
Lowaicue
英語在香港
My goodness, how old are you? Have you been living under a rock?
Let me say this slowly:
We do NOT want you to help any more than we want anyone else to help or anymore that you or they want us to help. Those days went out with zoot suits.
You have become as popular as a fart in a phone box and we really, honestly, do not wish to be tainted with your lying gung ho attitude again. That does not mean we will not make agreements with you it means we are not, and never will be, beholden to the most insincere and dishonest nation on earth.
Sorry about that, I know the truth sometimes hurts.
You can always go and hug someone. Try a Canadian. Oh no, they don't think much of you either... er ... who else could there be...?
Lowaicue
英語在香港
Is THAT irony, yurt?
cancel2 2022
Canceled
He thinks irony is some sort of medical prosthesis
cancel2 2022
Canceled
This is an article from the Bristol News in 2001, the ironic thing is that I got this from an American website!
[SIZE=+3][/SIZE]
The debate rumbles on about how America actually got its name. TOM HENRY reports:
WHAT’S in a name? Plenty, if you’ve lent your moniker to the richest and most powerful nation in the world – the United States of America.
History tells us, and has done for years, that the name of America came from one Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine transatlantic explorer who was a navigator with Christopher Columbus in 1499, and the first geographer to realise that the Americas were separate continents.
But for some years now, this claim to the name has been in dispute.
And nowhere has the debate been hotter than in Bristol, from where it is believed that the true origins of America came.
Now, a new book by Bristol author Rodney Broome makes a compelling case for a West Country connection to the name of America.
He looks at all the myths, legends, half-truths and theories surrounding the story to create a convincing alternative explanation.
Broome’s book Terra Incognita – The True Story of How America Got Its Name presents the argument that America was named after wealthy Bristol merchant Richard Amerike, who was an overseas trader living just outside the city in Long Ashton.
In the book, the author acknowledges that while Vespucci played an integral role in the naming of America, he never actually took credit for the name for himself.
However, in 1507 map-maker Martin Waldseemuller prepared a world map almost entirely from Vespucci’s maps.
In this map, the word ‘America’ is written across South America. In later editions of the map, Waldseemuller tried to change the name to ‘Terra Incognita’, or ‘Unknown Land.’
So if the author is correct and Vespucci never claimed that he named America, where did he get the word ‘America’ from?
According to Broome the answer is simple – English fishermen visited Newfoundland long before Christopher Columbus or John Cabot crossed the Atlantic.
“Bristol merchants bought salt cod in Iceland until the King of Denmark stopped the trade in 1475,” he said.
“In 1479, four Bristol merchants received a royal charter to find another source of fish and trade.
“Not until 1960 did someone find bills of trading records indicating that Richard Amerike was involved in this business. Records show that in 1481, Amerike shipped a load of salt (for salting fish) to these men in Newfoundland and I believe the Bristol sailors named the area after the Bristol merchant they worked for – Richard Amerike.”
In addition, it is believed that Cabot’s famous voyage to the New World on the Matthew was directly financed by Amerike.
He calculated that Bristol merchants may be persuaded to take him across the Atlantic on an officially-sanctioned expedition.
The voyage would be useful for the merchants who were constantly seeking new trading opportunities and it is thought that Amerike, a senior member of the Fellowship of Merchants and a customs office, made an application for a licence for the trip.
Although the first voyage turned back at Iceland, the second, which started out from Bristol in May 1497, eventually landed on the east cost of America a month later.
Many believe that Cabot, grateful for the attention he received in England on completion of the voyage, named an island or territory after his sponsor.
Broome contends that Cabot used the name America for his map, a copy of which Vespucci obtained.
This was purely speculative, he says, until 1955 when a misplaced letter was found in the Spanish National Archives. The letter confirms that Bristol merchants had reached Newfoundland earlier, and also notes that John Cabot’s map was sent to Columbus.
Amerike, whose surname possibly comes from a corruption of the Welsh name ‘ap Meric’, also had a coat of arms which, if it is to be believed, is a third piece of evidence in the linkage with the USA.
Six vertical stripes form the background to a row of three horizontal stars, and the crest’s colours include red, white and blue. Is the obvious resemblance to the modern-day stars and stripes an amazing coincidence, or something more concrete?
Broome comments: “The question then becomes ‘why haven’t we heard of Amerike before?’ Columbus and Vespucci wrote extensively about their voyages. The Bristol merchants did not.
“They were businessmen and more concerned about preserving their trade secret: discovery of the fishing grounds off Newfoundland.
“I’ve always been disappointed that nobody in the US seemed even remotely aware of Amerike. Vespucci seems to have total market saturation. This is an important piece of history that people should be aware of.”
[Back to Essay]
http://www.umc.sunysb.edu/surgery/broome.html
Litmus
Verified User
The Mass Psychology of Fascism -- Wilhelm Reich
The question at the heart of Reich's book was this: Why did the masses turn to authoritarianism which is clearly against their interests?[3] Reich set out to analyze "the economic and ideological structure of German society between 1928 and 1933" in this book.[4] In it, he calls communism "red fascism" and groups it in the same category as Nazism, and this leads to him being kicked out of the Communist Party.
Reich argued that the reason Nazism was chosen over fascism was sexual repression. As a child, a member of the proletariat had learned from his or her parents to suppress sexual desire. Hence, in the adult, rebellious and sexual impulses caused anxiety. Fear of revolt, as well as fear of sexuality, were thus "anchored" in the character of the masses. This influenced the irrationality of the people, Reich would argue.[3]
As Reich put it:
Suppression of the natural sexuality in the child, particularly of its genital sexuality, makes the child apprehensive, shy, obedient, afraid of authority, good and adjusted in the authoritarian sense; it paralyzes the rebellious forces because any rebellion is laden with anxiety; it produces, by inhibiting sexual curiosity and sexual thinking in the child, a general inhibition of thinking and of critical faculties. In brief, the goal of sexual suppression is that of producing an individual who is adjusted to the authoritarian order and who will submit to it in spite of all misery and degradation. At first the child has to submit to the structure of the authoritarian miniature state, the family; this makes it capable of later subordination to the general authoritarian system. The formation of the authoritarian structure takes place through the anchoring of sexual inhibition and anxiety.[3]
Reich noted that the symbolism of the swastika, evoking the fantasy of the primal scene, showed in spectacular fashion how Nazism systematically manipulated the unconscious. A repressive family, a baneful religion, a sadistic educational system, the terrorism of the party, and economic violence all operated in and through individuals' unconscious psychology of emotions, traumatic experiences, fantasies, libidinal economies, and so on, and Nazi political ideology and practice exacerbated and exploited these tendencies.[4]
For Reich, fighting fascism meant first of all studying it scientifically, which was to say, using the methods of psychoanalysis. Reason, alone able to check the forces of irrationality and loosen the grip of mysticism, is also capable of playing its own part in developing original modes of political action, building on a deep respect for life, and promoting a harmonious channeling of libido and orgastic potency. Reich proposed "work democracy," a self-managing form of social organization that would preserve the individual's freedom, independence, and responsibility and base itself on them.[4]
[edit]Banning
As a result of writing the book, Reich was kicked out of the Communist Party of Germany . The book was banned by the Nazis when they came to power. He realized he was in danger and hurriedly left Germany disguised as a tourist on a ski trip to Austria. Reich was expelled from the International Psychoanalytical Association in 1934 for political militancy.[5] The book was ordered to be burned on request of the FDA by a Maine judge in 1956, amongst other works by Reich.[6]
[edit]The authoritarian family as the first cell of the fascist society
Chapter V contains the famous statement that the family is the first cell of the fascist society:[7]
“ From the standpoint of social development, the family cannot be considered the basis of the authoritarian state, only as one of the most important institutions which support it. It is, however, its central reactionary germ cell, the most important place of reproduction of the reactionary and conservative individual. Being itself caused by the authoritarian system, the family becomes the most important institution for its conservation. In this connection, the findings of Morgan and of Engels are still entirely correct. ”
Michel Foucault reprised this analogy in his History of Madness (1961), in which he assesses life in the psychiatric asylum as a symbolic recreation of an authoritarian society. He speaks first of family tribunals of 1790 as the "elementary cell of civil jurisdiction"[8], and then of the madman-doctor couple, which he calls "the root cell of madness":
“ It is a curious paradox to see medical practice enter the uncertain domain of the quasi-miraculous at the very moment when the knowledge of mental illness was trying to assume a sense of positivity. On the one hand madness is placed at a distance in an objective field where the threats of unreason disappear; but at the same moment the madman and the doctor begin to form a strange sort of couple, an undivided unity where complicity is forged along very ancient lines. Life in the asylums, such as it was constituted by Tuke and Pinel, enabled the growth of this subtle structure that was like the root cell of madness - a structure forming a microcosm where all the great, massive structures of bourgeois society and its values had their own symbol: the relationship between Family and Children structured around the theme of paternal authority; the relationship between Fault and Punishment around the theme of immediate justice; and the links between Madness and Disorder around the theme of social and moral order.[9] ”
Deleuze and Guattari reprised Reich arguments in their joint works Anti-Œdipus,[citation needed] and A Thousand Plateaus, in which they talk about the formation of fascism at the molecular level of society.[10]
[edit]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mass_Psychology_of_Fascism
The question at the heart of Reich's book was this: Why did the masses turn to authoritarianism which is clearly against their interests?[3] Reich set out to analyze "the economic and ideological structure of German society between 1928 and 1933" in this book.[4] In it, he calls communism "red fascism" and groups it in the same category as Nazism, and this leads to him being kicked out of the Communist Party.
Reich argued that the reason Nazism was chosen over fascism was sexual repression. As a child, a member of the proletariat had learned from his or her parents to suppress sexual desire. Hence, in the adult, rebellious and sexual impulses caused anxiety. Fear of revolt, as well as fear of sexuality, were thus "anchored" in the character of the masses. This influenced the irrationality of the people, Reich would argue.[3]
As Reich put it:
Suppression of the natural sexuality in the child, particularly of its genital sexuality, makes the child apprehensive, shy, obedient, afraid of authority, good and adjusted in the authoritarian sense; it paralyzes the rebellious forces because any rebellion is laden with anxiety; it produces, by inhibiting sexual curiosity and sexual thinking in the child, a general inhibition of thinking and of critical faculties. In brief, the goal of sexual suppression is that of producing an individual who is adjusted to the authoritarian order and who will submit to it in spite of all misery and degradation. At first the child has to submit to the structure of the authoritarian miniature state, the family; this makes it capable of later subordination to the general authoritarian system. The formation of the authoritarian structure takes place through the anchoring of sexual inhibition and anxiety.[3]
Reich noted that the symbolism of the swastika, evoking the fantasy of the primal scene, showed in spectacular fashion how Nazism systematically manipulated the unconscious. A repressive family, a baneful religion, a sadistic educational system, the terrorism of the party, and economic violence all operated in and through individuals' unconscious psychology of emotions, traumatic experiences, fantasies, libidinal economies, and so on, and Nazi political ideology and practice exacerbated and exploited these tendencies.[4]
For Reich, fighting fascism meant first of all studying it scientifically, which was to say, using the methods of psychoanalysis. Reason, alone able to check the forces of irrationality and loosen the grip of mysticism, is also capable of playing its own part in developing original modes of political action, building on a deep respect for life, and promoting a harmonious channeling of libido and orgastic potency. Reich proposed "work democracy," a self-managing form of social organization that would preserve the individual's freedom, independence, and responsibility and base itself on them.[4]
[edit]Banning
As a result of writing the book, Reich was kicked out of the Communist Party of Germany . The book was banned by the Nazis when they came to power. He realized he was in danger and hurriedly left Germany disguised as a tourist on a ski trip to Austria. Reich was expelled from the International Psychoanalytical Association in 1934 for political militancy.[5] The book was ordered to be burned on request of the FDA by a Maine judge in 1956, amongst other works by Reich.[6]
[edit]The authoritarian family as the first cell of the fascist society
Chapter V contains the famous statement that the family is the first cell of the fascist society:[7]
“ From the standpoint of social development, the family cannot be considered the basis of the authoritarian state, only as one of the most important institutions which support it. It is, however, its central reactionary germ cell, the most important place of reproduction of the reactionary and conservative individual. Being itself caused by the authoritarian system, the family becomes the most important institution for its conservation. In this connection, the findings of Morgan and of Engels are still entirely correct. ”
Michel Foucault reprised this analogy in his History of Madness (1961), in which he assesses life in the psychiatric asylum as a symbolic recreation of an authoritarian society. He speaks first of family tribunals of 1790 as the "elementary cell of civil jurisdiction"[8], and then of the madman-doctor couple, which he calls "the root cell of madness":
“ It is a curious paradox to see medical practice enter the uncertain domain of the quasi-miraculous at the very moment when the knowledge of mental illness was trying to assume a sense of positivity. On the one hand madness is placed at a distance in an objective field where the threats of unreason disappear; but at the same moment the madman and the doctor begin to form a strange sort of couple, an undivided unity where complicity is forged along very ancient lines. Life in the asylums, such as it was constituted by Tuke and Pinel, enabled the growth of this subtle structure that was like the root cell of madness - a structure forming a microcosm where all the great, massive structures of bourgeois society and its values had their own symbol: the relationship between Family and Children structured around the theme of paternal authority; the relationship between Fault and Punishment around the theme of immediate justice; and the links between Madness and Disorder around the theme of social and moral order.[9] ”
Deleuze and Guattari reprised Reich arguments in their joint works Anti-Œdipus,[citation needed] and A Thousand Plateaus, in which they talk about the formation of fascism at the molecular level of society.[10]
[edit]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mass_Psychology_of_Fascism
I love this book. I re-read it about six months ago. Of course the consistent sheep bleating reminded me of something much different than Fox News. Yes, I would recommend this book to everybody as well.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/198...780451524935&itm=1&usri=1984+by+george+orwell
cawacko
Well-known member
I read Barry Goldwater's 'Conscious of a Conservative' yesterday. I really enjoyed it and it is especially interesting to read his take on the Cold War circa 1960. The same issues he talks about then are the same issues we are talking about today (and I suspect will be for years into the future) education, taxes and the role government should play in our lives.
DamnYankee
Loyal to the end
Back to Basics for the Republican Party, by Michel Zak.
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
How could I forget one of the most important works of literature of the 20th century. It's hugely influenced how I think of government and politics. "Catch-22"!!!
"Appleby was as good at shooting crap as he was at playing Ping-Pong, and he was as good at playing Ping-Pong as he was at everything else. Everything Appleby did, he did well. Appleby was a fair-haired boy from Iowa who believed in God, Motherhood, and the American Way of Life, without ever thinking about any of them, and everybody who knew him liked him.
"I hate that son of a bitch," Yossarian growled."
"Colonel Cargill, General Peckem's troubleshooter, was a forceful, ruddy man. Before the war he had been an alert, hard-hitting, aggressive marketing executive. He was a very bad marketing executive. Colonel Cargill was so awful a marketing executive that his services were much sought after by firms eager to establish losses for tax purposes. Throughout the civilized world, from Battery Park to Fulton Street, he was known as a dependable man for a fast tax write-off. His prices were high, for failure often did not come easily. He had to start at the top and work his way down, and with sympathetic friends in Washington, losing money was no simple matter. It took months of hard work and careful misplanning. A person misplaced, disorganized, miscalculated, overlooked everything and opened every loophole, and just when he thought he had it made, the government gave him a lake or a forest or an oilfield and spoiled everything. Even with such handicaps, Colonel Cargill could be relied on to run the most prosperous enterprise into the ground. He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody. "
"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed."
"Do you really want some more codeine?" Dr. Stubbs asked.
"It's for my friend Yossarian. He's sure he's going to be killed."
"Yossarian? Who the hell is Yossarian? What the hell kind of a name is Yossarian, anyway? Isn't he the one who got drunk and started that fight with Colonel Korn at the officer's club the other night?"
"That's right. He's Assyrian."
"That crazy bastard."
"He's not so crazy," Dunbar said. "He swears he's not going to fly to Bologna."
"That's just what I mean," Dr. Stubbs answered. "That crazy bastard may be the only sane one left."
"This time Milo had gone too far. Bombing his own men and planes was more than even the most phlegmatic observer could stomach, and it looked like the end for him. … Milo was all washed up until he opened his books to the public and disclosed the tremendous profit he had made. "
"Appleby was as good at shooting crap as he was at playing Ping-Pong, and he was as good at playing Ping-Pong as he was at everything else. Everything Appleby did, he did well. Appleby was a fair-haired boy from Iowa who believed in God, Motherhood, and the American Way of Life, without ever thinking about any of them, and everybody who knew him liked him.
"I hate that son of a bitch," Yossarian growled."
"Colonel Cargill, General Peckem's troubleshooter, was a forceful, ruddy man. Before the war he had been an alert, hard-hitting, aggressive marketing executive. He was a very bad marketing executive. Colonel Cargill was so awful a marketing executive that his services were much sought after by firms eager to establish losses for tax purposes. Throughout the civilized world, from Battery Park to Fulton Street, he was known as a dependable man for a fast tax write-off. His prices were high, for failure often did not come easily. He had to start at the top and work his way down, and with sympathetic friends in Washington, losing money was no simple matter. It took months of hard work and careful misplanning. A person misplaced, disorganized, miscalculated, overlooked everything and opened every loophole, and just when he thought he had it made, the government gave him a lake or a forest or an oilfield and spoiled everything. Even with such handicaps, Colonel Cargill could be relied on to run the most prosperous enterprise into the ground. He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody. "
"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed."
"Do you really want some more codeine?" Dr. Stubbs asked.
"It's for my friend Yossarian. He's sure he's going to be killed."
"Yossarian? Who the hell is Yossarian? What the hell kind of a name is Yossarian, anyway? Isn't he the one who got drunk and started that fight with Colonel Korn at the officer's club the other night?"
"That's right. He's Assyrian."
"That crazy bastard."
"He's not so crazy," Dunbar said. "He swears he's not going to fly to Bologna."
"That's just what I mean," Dr. Stubbs answered. "That crazy bastard may be the only sane one left."
"This time Milo had gone too far. Bombing his own men and planes was more than even the most phlegmatic observer could stomach, and it looked like the end for him. … Milo was all washed up until he opened his books to the public and disclosed the tremendous profit he had made. "
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
Here's the most important books that have influenced my political thinking.
Catch-22; Lesson - How absurd government bureuacracies can be when ran by bad and/or incompetent people.
The Prince; Lesson - Applied political theory
The Art of War; Lesson - The Tao of strategy.
Atlas Shrugged; Lesson - How to be objective (but not really).
The Gulag Archipelago; Lesson - Mans inhumanity to man and how one determined person can make a difference.
The True Believer; Lesson - The psychological make up of a fanatic and their impact on political mass movements.
Catch-22; Lesson - How absurd government bureuacracies can be when ran by bad and/or incompetent people.
The Prince; Lesson - Applied political theory
The Art of War; Lesson - The Tao of strategy.
Atlas Shrugged; Lesson - How to be objective (but not really).
The Gulag Archipelago; Lesson - Mans inhumanity to man and how one determined person can make a difference.
The True Believer; Lesson - The psychological make up of a fanatic and their impact on political mass movements.
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cancel2 2022
Canceled
Here are a few must reads.
Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward
Reagan & Thatcher by Geoffrey Smith
Mad as Hell: Revolt & the Ballot Box 1992 by Jules Witcover & Jack Germond
Bad Boy: The Life & Times of Lee Atwater by John Brady
Herbst '89 by Egon Krenz
Nixon: Ruin & Recovery 1973-1990 by Stephen Ambrose
Six Crises by Richard Nixon
Memoirs by Richard Nixon
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Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
I tried reading "Memoirs" by Nixon. I couldn't get past the first chapter before I about stroked out. What a self serving repugnant ego maniac. A brilliant geopolitical thinker? Yes. An extraordinarily flawed individual lacking in both character and morals who grossly abused power? With out a doubt.
brazenhussy
Verified User
At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance--A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power by Danielle McGuire. A difficult but very important read if you are an American. Especially if you are a woman of any race.