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  • Originally posted by Minskaya View Post
    A Cruel And Shocking Act: The Secret History Of The Kennedy Assassination
    Philip Shenon / Henry Holt / 2013 / 625pp

    Much like his previous work - The Commission: The Uncensored History Of The 9/11 Investigation - Shenon explains why the American public wound up with the Warren Commission Report. It's not pretty. Major government institutions (Secret Service/FBI/CIA) all had shortcomings regarding the assassination they did not wish exposed. The Dallas police were thoroughly incompetent. Chief Justice Earl Warren did everything in his power to protect Jacqueline and Robert Kennedy from commission intrusion. Commissioner Gerald Ford did everything in his power to protect his friend J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Warren was predisposed to the scenario of a sole assassin (Oswald) and dismissed any possibility of foreign or domestic conspiracy. He also nixed intensive interviews with some valuable witnesses because such leads were at odds with his no-conspiracy dogma. Oswald did kill JFK and Dallas police officer J.D. Tippet. Jack Ruby did kill Oswald. Beyond those major conclusions, things get murky due to incompetence, malfeasance, protectionism, and predisposition.
    All true, probably. But the primary purpose of the Commission was to get ahead of public fears that the assassination was the work of the Soviets, some other hostile power or an internal organization. I was 23 at the time, and I remember well how important that was. Faults in domestic bodies before and after the assassination were important, but dwelling on them at the moment would not have been productive. All the agencies tasked with security and law enforcement eventually learned and corrected their shortcomings. History may well be served by seeing the past through the lens of the present, but not in this case. The Commission was a brilliant idea at the time and it achieved its primary purpose.
    To be Truly ignorant, Man requires an Education - Plato

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    • Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick

      Just finished it and I have to say I enjoyed it immensely. The book is a narrative non-fiction account of the lives of six North Korean defectors. The author is a journalist based on the Korean peninsula and has journeyed to the north on multiple occasions.

      Reading a book like this leaves you with the feeling that North Korea is the most unusual place to have lived since the second world war, you feel as if you exploring an alien world, an alternative history, or the fantasies of someone obsessed with Orwell's 1984.

      It is also very moving, the descriptions of daily life, the slow onset of the famine in the 1990s, the consequences of defection. The author doesn't romanticize the characters and deserves plaudits on this count. She stays grounded when accounting their lives and places them in the proper context of the overarching geopolitical context, in other words, nearly entirely independent of such matters. We see the matter from their narrow perspective and she doesn't deviate very often. She doesn't give much focus to discussing the wider political context, in making predictions on the regime's longevity, or even in condemning the regime, that's self-apparent.

      The book unfolds loosely in chronological order, their lives over many decades under the regime, how life is structured and how the regime controls every element of society, she follows the defectors attempts to adapt to life upon escape. Having successfully avoided romanticizing their lives, of focusing on major events, or summarized life to a few core emotions, I feel she captured what life is really like, a thing that happens second through second, day by day, and North Korea is a strange place to experience that and a fascinating place to read about.

      Some of her defectors were committed to the regime and worshiped Kim Il-Sung, I would have liked to have heard more from the defectors on how their attitudes had changed towards his legacy upon their defection, and in general their opinions on the psychology of the north koreans in regard to Kim Il-Sung. For me, this god-like persona is the most extraordinary phenomenon in North Korea and the account of how each of the defectors reacted upon hearing that he had died was the most striking part of the book. For them, it was the equivalent of 9/11 and the question of where were you when it happened carried the same weight, or at least where were you when the news was released. However, the author stays true to her narrow narrative focus and doesn't offer any detailed analysis of North Korean society, in this she stays true to her primary objective, providing an account of life under the regime.

      Another fascinating element in the book was the account of the evolution of marketplaces during the famine where people developed businesses to earn enough money to buy food. Capitalism taking root. Those on the economic right will enjoy the broad philosophical implications of this and how it serves as a fascinating example of the power of capitalist ideology thriving under the most extreme conditions imaginable.

      Highly recommended.

      Has anyone else read it?
      Last edited by tantalus; 04 Apr 14,, 20:34.

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      • Several right now.

        Still readying "I am Jennie". Decently into Barbara Eden's "Jeannie out of the bottle". Reading McCaffrey/Moon's "Generation Warriors". Doing "The Book of Rack the Healer" to practice my high speed reading. And thinking of testing my detachment with a book about Himmler.

        But tonight, after I'm done with checking things on the Net, I need to review a First Aid book.

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        • A very good memoir from Graeme Smith on his years in Afghanistan.

          The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan: Graeme Smith: 9780307397805: Amazon.com: Books
          For Gallifrey! For Victory! For the end of time itself!!

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          • I recently came across STRATFOR founder George Friedman's seminal work from Cornell, The Political Philosophy of the Frankfurt School (1981).

            As a matter of deterrence, for all who cannot stand postmodernist prose, I feel the urge to quote the following passage (p. 177):
            Marcuse traces the thanatotic drive to the painful relationship between man and nature, as does early Freud. The id, unable to achieve positive gratification (pleasure) seeks instead the negative gratification of nirvana; it seeks the peaceful nothingness of the womb or to the period preceding the emergence of the species (to an Ur-existence)—is physically impossible. Thus, since the id cannot seek the quiescence of the womb and society cannot repeat the mythical peacefulness of prehistory, the organism searches for peace in the certainty of death. If the erotic tendencies in man cannot be fulfilled, then the thanatotic solution is all that is left for man, both as an individual and as civilization. War, suffering, and death must all find their source in the repression necessitated by nature ...

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            • I had picked these two up for my casual stuck in traffic reading and was pleasantly surprised.
              Thoughtfully plotted carefully written. The neat way he structures conflict in space around the limitations imposed by physics particularly impressed.
              Through Struggle the Stars
              The Desert of Stars
              For Gallifrey! For Victory! For the end of time itself!!

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              • Reading Clive Cussler's Arctic Drift but whenever I get my hands on Taylor Andersons new book Deadly Shore i'll be reading it (came out yesterday but the B&N I went to didnt have it :bang:.
                RIP Charles "Bob" Spence. 1936-2014.

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                • Most Indians probably have read it, and many from abroad too. I'm late, but WTH!

                  The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
                  Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

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                  • Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941 by Ian Kershaw
                    Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

                    Abusing Yellow is meant to be a labor of love, not something you sell to the highest bidder.

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                    • Originally posted by bigross86 View Post
                      Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941 by Ian Kershaw
                      Worth the time?
                      No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

                      To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

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                      • I'm conflicted. On the one hand, very interesting. Gives incredible in-depth background and analysis of what led to each decision, what were the alternatives, and what were the consequences.

                        On the other hand, it's just so loooong! I've read much longer books, including on WWII, but for some reason this one is just taking me forever to read.

                        I'll finish it because I'm already halfway through, but once I'm done I'm just gonna read some Tom Clancy or Nelson DeMille that I've read a dozen times, give my brain some time off....
                        Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

                        Abusing Yellow is meant to be a labor of love, not something you sell to the highest bidder.

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                        • Since August draws ever nearer, I am re-reading the Guns of August.

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                          • Pakistan Army Green Book 1990, 2008, 2010

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                            • God is not great: How religion poisons everything by Christopher Hitchens

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                              • John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (Norton, 2003).

                                In many ways an overly simplistic work by the notorious anti-Semite. That is, land-based forces take precedence to sea and air; states are rational actors; the balance of power is military assets/troops by another name.

                                However, as he outlines the theoretical framework of offensive realism, providing plenty of empirical data and partially building on Thucydides' trifecta of fear, honor, self-interest, Mearsheimer succeeds in engaging the reader in his vision of a world in conflict. That said, Mearsheimer's oeuvre is no Politics among Nations.

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