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Just a thread for what you are currently reading/digesting and a short blurb.

I'm reading Webster Tarpley's Surviving the Cataclysm: Your Guide Through the Worst Financial Crisis in Human History. I heard about it on this week's Guns and Butter, where Bonnie interviews Tarpley on the current financial crisis. The book seems a bit dated to me, considering that it is from 1999 and many things have happened since then, but it puts things in perspective - it seems 'systemic crisis' is always just a heartbeat away. Honestly, it is tough going for me, as I don't understand all the financial jargon, and perhaps I am missing much. I'm going to try and get through it, though - I really got a lot out of 911 Synthetic Terror. With a title like Surviving the Cataclysm: Your Guide Through the Worst Financial Crisis in Human History I am hoping there is some practical advice I can glean...

On edit: I shouldn't say it is dated at all, just not current. It's a whopping 875 pages of history and analysis!

§ê¢rꆧ wrote:Just a thread for what you are currently reading/digesting and a short blurb.

I'm reading Webster Tarpley's Surviving the Cataclysm: Your Guide Through the Worst Financial Crisis in Human History. I heard about it on this week's Guns and Butter, where Bonnie interviews Tarpley on the current financial crisis. .....

It's tricky to understand even in his interview on Guns and Butter but I almost got it.
Probably worth listening to a few times to get as much as possible.

I'm reading so many books and online materials I can hardly pick.

I'm reading Dick Russell's 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' about former US military-intel double agent, Richard Case Nagell, and his knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald's double agent career.

It's good for learning about mil-intel in Asia after WWII and the many factions infiltrating each other leading up to the murder of JFK. Ironically, it seems the KGB wanted to prevent the killing of JFK while the CIA and FBI wanted it to happen, exactly the opposite of what the public is still told to this day.

I'm also reading Timothy Leary's 'Changing My Mind , Among Others,' a collection of his lifetime writings selected and introduced by him.

Leary's personal and professional experiments in cognition and brain function are a must read for anyone who wants a no-holds-barred description of this area usually treated in very distant and 'safe' language by academics trying to keep their status.
Leary didn't worry about that. In fact, much of his thinking was committed to paper while he was in jail.

His 'Neurologics' description of 8 circuits of brain function was hijacked, I think, by the movie 'The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai in the 8th Dimension' along with elements of Dick Russell's book about Richard Case Nagell. The timing is right.

Mr Manatee Wins (may I call you Hugh?) - if you had to recommend one Timothy Leary book, which would it be?

I'm reading a book by Aldous Huxley right now called The Perennial Philosophy, beautiful English and extremely learned (as you'd expect) overview of Christian, Buddhist and Sufi mysticism.

U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Canada by John Clearwater

stefano wrote:Mr Manatee Wins (may I call you Hugh?) - if you had to recommend one Timothy Leary book, which would it be?

I'm reading a book by Aldous Huxley right now called The Perennial Philosophy, beautiful English and extremely learned (as you'd expect) overview of Christian, Buddhist and Sufi mysticism.

I only have the one Leary book and it is his own edited compilation of his work, and excellent overview of 'Leary-ism.'

As for Aldous Huxley, his 1958 'Brave New World Revisited' is a must. He describes how the social control mechanisms he fantasized about in the 1930s were already in the hands of dictators by 1958 and scientific fascism was bound to metastasize into a dystopia pretty damn quickly.

It certainly has and his description of it from 50 years ago is amazingly accurate.
Television has turned out to be the multi-effect drug called Soma he envisioned in his first 'Brave New World' book.

And Huxley didn't predict how much social control would come from simply being diverted and distracted by irrelevence and piffle.

Thanks - yes I want to read something by Leary but don't know where to start. 'Neuropolitics' also looks interesting.

The thing from Brave New World that sticks in my mind is the little rhyme 'ending is better than mending', the way people get taught to use up as much as possible to keep the industrial machine humming.

Ziggin' and a Zaggin' wrote:U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Canada by John Clearwater

That sounds interesting. Does this go on beyond the Bomarc's?

Concerning U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Canada, by John Clearwater, yes, it does indeed go beyond the Bomarc missiles. It covers, for example, the Genie, a nuclear armed air-to-air missile designed to bring down Russian bombers. CF-101 Voodoos, flown by the Canadian air force in the early 1960s, were equipped with Genies. Nuclear depth charges (Mark 101 "Lulu", and the B57 bomb) were also stored at Argentia Naval Station for use by American maritime patrol aircraft stationed there.

Many nuclear weapon components were pre-positioned at bases in Canada where the US Air Force had been active for many years: Goose Bay Air Force Base, Ernest Harmon AFB. As early as 1950, eleven Fat Man style nuclear bombs were stored for a few months at Goose Bay.

What was surprising was the number of regular overflights of Canadian territory by SAC bombers many of which were carrying nuclear bombs although these were not "fuzed". Typically, the bombers would take off from bases in the continental U.S. and later refueled by American tankers flying out of Goose Bay. For many years, SAC maintained a high-level of readiness whereby a significant number of bombers would be in the air at any one time... and ready to strike the USSR, of course. This required a great deal of training. Of course, accidents would occur and did. Clearwater's book includes a chronology of accidents the most notable being: St. Lawrence River near Rivière-du-Loup on November 10, 1950, and off the Coast of British Columbia, on February 13, 1950.

Much of the book focuses on the Canadian government's efforts to maintain a modicum of sovereignty on overflights of its territory. Negotiations took place at an agonizingly slow pace, to the annoyance of the Americans. I suspect that if push came to shove (i.e., a real air attack by the Soviets), the US would have ignored any diplomatic niceties. The US deployed nuclear weapons in many countries, in some cases without the knowledge of the "recipient" country.

One thing that I found a bit humorous : the Canadian bureaucrats insistence that nuclear weapon components be processed for customs and excise purposes. Pretty absurd.

Overall though, I would not recommend this book (I borrowed it from my local library). It is written in a very dry and academic style. In my opinion, the interesting aspects of its contents - except for the list of nuclear accidents/incidents - could have been summarized in a 10-page article. If you're really interested in the subject of US nuclear weapons deployed in other countries, this article from the NY Times would be a good place to start.

I've just finished reading Stealing God's Thunder: Benjamin Franklin's Lightning Rod and the Invention of America, by Philip Dray.

I had been meaning to read about Benjamin Franklin for a while and this book was one of the few available at my local library. It turned out to be a fascinating journey back in a time of intellectual and political change, the Age of Enlightenment. Franklin's intellectual curiosity, apart from nearly killing him, produced the lightning rod which pitted him against prevailing religious or superstitious beliefs as well as the Church establishment. The accepted way to deal with lightning in his time was to ring the church bells. Pity the bell ringers. Franklin was very highly regarded by many European luminaries of the day : Joseph Priestley and Voltaire, for example. I would certainly recommend this book. My only peeve about the book is the epilogue's lack of reference to Nikola Tesla as it surveys the legacy of Franklin's experiments with electricity and mentions the likes of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. You can read other people's opinions about this book here .

Currently I am a quarter of the way into Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson, apparently a must-read according to many RI members. So far, I would agree with them.

I DON'T HAVE TIME TO REREAD BOOKS!

I get no sleep as it is (2 year old daughter in the house) and I have a constant stream of new books arriving at my office and my house daily, they're piling up faster than I can possibly read them.

But for some reason I find myself re-reading Trevor Ravenscroft "Spear of Destiny" again, for about the fourth time.

I have had a short email exchange with Peter Levenda about this book, I asked him why there was no mention of it or Hitler's ostensible fascination with the Spear in his Unholy Alliance book. His opinion was that Ravenscroft was more or less unreliable and his account cannot be corroborated. He may have called him an alcoholic as well, I can't remember, I don't have the email anymore.

Blood on the Altar, Craig Heimbichner, I gave it a 70%

"The Illusion Soviet Soldiers in Hitler's Armies" by Jürgen Thorwald

The story of the Vlasov army and how it was handled, and mishandled, by the German authorities and then by the Western Allies.

The problem I have with books lately is that I'm constantly going online to double and fact check, once I'm on I don't get back so it takes me ages to finish a book and sometimes I read enough online that I lose interest in the book. Then too, I'm always looking for a search box to go back to some phrase or sentence as if it were a .pdf file.

I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

http://cryptogon.com/?p=2725

...from a nearby stack I'm working on...

>Hadley Cantril's 1941 'The Psychology of Social Movements'

>I.F. Stone's 1953 'The Truman Era'

>Philip Agee's 1981 'White Paper/White Wash: Interviews with Philip Agee on teh CIA and El Salvador

>Ward Churchill's 2003 'On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of US Imperial Arrogance and Criminality'

>Jeff Cohen's 2006 'Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media'

>Disney/Pixar's 2008 'Wall*E - The Intergalactic Guide'

Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA : by Jim Hougan


Amazon.com: History Will Not Absolve Us : Orwellian Control, Public Denial, & the Murder of President Kennedy: Books: E. Martin Schotz