I got the knight off.
"I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-crooked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own. That they design and want. That they fight and work for. [Not one] crammed down their throats by Americans."--Marine Commandant General David Shoup, quoted in Noam Chomsky, Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and U.S. Political Culture
I had brunch with locakitty and clockworkalien this morning at Paradise Bakery & Café. It was quite good. I've been to various Paradise Bakery locations for lunch and dinner in the past, but this was the first time I tried any of their breakfast foods. The oatmeal served in an oatmeal cookie bowl is much more filling than it looks.
Apparently clockworkalien and I were both at the Back Alley Film Festival last night, but neither of us were aware of the other's presence. It wasn't as good as it's been in previous years. Two films were repeats from previous years, but one of them, titled Spider, was still enjoyable the second time around. I thought the volume was turned up too loud during the whole festival (or at least the part of it I attended, before getting tired of the sound volume and the bizarre, unseasonably cold weather).
What was supposed to be a three-day weekend for me has now been cut short. Long story short, I have to work tomorrow, since a deadline that I was first told was in September has now been moved to the end of this month. I guess next weekend will be my three-day weekend (unless some other surprise is in store for me).
I finished reading Chomsky's Rethinking Camelot this weekend, so below are some excerpts I wanted to copy before I return the book to the library. All of the ellipses in Chomsky's words are mine; all of them in the words of people he quotes are either his or theirs.One of the few really surprising disclosures in the Pentagon Papers was that in an intelligence record of 25 years, the analysts could find only one paper--a staff paper not submitted--that even raised the question of whether Hanoi was pursuing its national interests, not following the orders of its foreign masters. One can scarcely exaggerate the effectiveness of doctrinal need in enforcing a kind of institutional stupidity (13).
In 1937, the State Department saw fascism as compatible with US economic interests, and also the natural reaction of "the rich and middle classes, in self-defense" when the "dissatisfied masses, with the example of the Russian revolution before them, swing to the Left." Fascism therefore "must succeed or the masses, this time reinforced by the disillusioned middle classes, will again turn to the left." US diplomat William Bullitt..."believed that only Nazi Germany could stay the advance of Soviet Bolshevism into Europe," Daniel Yergin observes....Major US corporations were heavily involved in German war production, sometimes enriching themselves (notably, the Ford motor company) by joining in the plunder of Jewish assets under Hitler's Aryanization program. "U.S. investment in Germany accelerated rapidly after Hitler came to power," Christopher Simpson writes, increasing "by some 48.5 percent between 1929 and 1940, while declining sharply everywhere else in continental Europe" and barely holding steady in Britain (20).
Tacitus's principle [that "Crime once exposed had no refuge but in audacity"] is understood by every petty crook who knows enough to shout "Thief! Thief!" when caught with his hands in someone's pocket. It is a standard propaganda ploy, commonly adopted by powerful states to punish their victims: France's demand that Haiti pay a huge indemnity to compensate for its successful slave revolt is another famous example, with consequences that still endure, two centuries later (28).
The most extensive study of high school history texts found that the word terror "does not appear once in reference to U.S. or client practices in any of the 48 texts examined in 1979 and 1990. The Viet Cong, it is duly noted, murdered and terrorized; one can only wonder how they could possibly out-terrorize Diem's U.S.-backed forces" (61).
[Marine Commandant Wallace] Greene's predecessor General David Shoup, Marine Commandant through the Kennedy years and known as Kennedy's "favorite service chief," reports that when the Joint Chiefs considered troop deployment, "in every case...every senior officer that I knew...said we should never send ground combat forces into Southeast Asia" (103).
Another favored idea is that JFK had become a demon to the military-industrial complex because he was going to end the Cold War. To assess the thesis, we may turn again to the speech he was to give in Dallas on the day of the assassination, with its proud boast about his vast increases in Polaris submarines, Minuteman missiles, strategic bombers on 15-minute alert, nuclear weapons in strategic alert forces, readiness of conventional forces, procurement, naval construction and modernization, tactical aircraft, and special forces. JFK military Keynesianism had raised Pentagon spending from $45.3 billion in 1960 to $52.1 billion in 1962....By the end of JFK's term, over 78 percent of all R&D was funded by the federal government, overwhelmingly military and space (barely indistinguishable), almost all for the "private sector," a huge increase in three years (142).
As historians of the [Central Intelligence] Agency have pointed out, it was Lyndon Johnson who treated the CIA "with contempt," while JFK's distress over the Bay of Pigs "in no way undermined his firm faith in the principle of covert operations. He fired the CIA's harshest critic (Chester Bowles)....[T]he CIA was "reestablished...in White House favor" and became a "significant voice in policy making" under Kennedy, particularly in 1963, "as covert actions multiplied in Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and Africa" (144).
Six military coups overthrew popular regimes during the Kennedy years, ten more later; in several cases, Kennedy Administration policies contributed materially to the outcome. In 1962-1963, Kennedy's CIA initiated its (successful) program to subvert the 1964 election in Chile, because, as the NSC determined, "We are not prepared to risk a Socialist or FRAP [Allende] victory, for fear of nationalization of U.S. investments" and "probable Communist influence" (146).
I had brunch with locakitty and clockworkalien this morning at Paradise Bakery & Café. It was quite good. I've been to various Paradise Bakery locations for lunch and dinner in the past, but this was the first time I tried any of their breakfast foods. The oatmeal served in an oatmeal cookie bowl is much more filling than it looks.
Apparently clockworkalien and I were both at the Back Alley Film Festival last night, but neither of us were aware of the other's presence. It wasn't as good as it's been in previous years. Two films were repeats from previous years, but one of them, titled Spider, was still enjoyable the second time around. I thought the volume was turned up too loud during the whole festival (or at least the part of it I attended, before getting tired of the sound volume and the bizarre, unseasonably cold weather).
What was supposed to be a three-day weekend for me has now been cut short. Long story short, I have to work tomorrow, since a deadline that I was first told was in September has now been moved to the end of this month. I guess next weekend will be my three-day weekend (unless some other surprise is in store for me).
I finished reading Chomsky's Rethinking Camelot this weekend, so below are some excerpts I wanted to copy before I return the book to the library. All of the ellipses in Chomsky's words are mine; all of them in the words of people he quotes are either his or theirs.One of the few really surprising disclosures in the Pentagon Papers was that in an intelligence record of 25 years, the analysts could find only one paper--a staff paper not submitted--that even raised the question of whether Hanoi was pursuing its national interests, not following the orders of its foreign masters. One can scarcely exaggerate the effectiveness of doctrinal need in enforcing a kind of institutional stupidity (13).
In 1937, the State Department saw fascism as compatible with US economic interests, and also the natural reaction of "the rich and middle classes, in self-defense" when the "dissatisfied masses, with the example of the Russian revolution before them, swing to the Left." Fascism therefore "must succeed or the masses, this time reinforced by the disillusioned middle classes, will again turn to the left." US diplomat William Bullitt..."believed that only Nazi Germany could stay the advance of Soviet Bolshevism into Europe," Daniel Yergin observes....Major US corporations were heavily involved in German war production, sometimes enriching themselves (notably, the Ford motor company) by joining in the plunder of Jewish assets under Hitler's Aryanization program. "U.S. investment in Germany accelerated rapidly after Hitler came to power," Christopher Simpson writes, increasing "by some 48.5 percent between 1929 and 1940, while declining sharply everywhere else in continental Europe" and barely holding steady in Britain (20).
Tacitus's principle [that "Crime once exposed had no refuge but in audacity"] is understood by every petty crook who knows enough to shout "Thief! Thief!" when caught with his hands in someone's pocket. It is a standard propaganda ploy, commonly adopted by powerful states to punish their victims: France's demand that Haiti pay a huge indemnity to compensate for its successful slave revolt is another famous example, with consequences that still endure, two centuries later (28).
The most extensive study of high school history texts found that the word terror "does not appear once in reference to U.S. or client practices in any of the 48 texts examined in 1979 and 1990. The Viet Cong, it is duly noted, murdered and terrorized; one can only wonder how they could possibly out-terrorize Diem's U.S.-backed forces" (61).
[Marine Commandant Wallace] Greene's predecessor General David Shoup, Marine Commandant through the Kennedy years and known as Kennedy's "favorite service chief," reports that when the Joint Chiefs considered troop deployment, "in every case...every senior officer that I knew...said we should never send ground combat forces into Southeast Asia" (103).
Another favored idea is that JFK had become a demon to the military-industrial complex because he was going to end the Cold War. To assess the thesis, we may turn again to the speech he was to give in Dallas on the day of the assassination, with its proud boast about his vast increases in Polaris submarines, Minuteman missiles, strategic bombers on 15-minute alert, nuclear weapons in strategic alert forces, readiness of conventional forces, procurement, naval construction and modernization, tactical aircraft, and special forces. JFK military Keynesianism had raised Pentagon spending from $45.3 billion in 1960 to $52.1 billion in 1962....By the end of JFK's term, over 78 percent of all R&D was funded by the federal government, overwhelmingly military and space (barely indistinguishable), almost all for the "private sector," a huge increase in three years (142).
As historians of the [Central Intelligence] Agency have pointed out, it was Lyndon Johnson who treated the CIA "with contempt," while JFK's distress over the Bay of Pigs "in no way undermined his firm faith in the principle of covert operations. He fired the CIA's harshest critic (Chester Bowles)....[T]he CIA was "reestablished...in White House favor" and became a "significant voice in policy making" under Kennedy, particularly in 1963, "as covert actions multiplied in Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and Africa" (144).
Six military coups overthrew popular regimes during the Kennedy years, ten more later; in several cases, Kennedy Administration policies contributed materially to the outcome. In 1962-1963, Kennedy's CIA initiated its (successful) program to subvert the 1964 election in Chile, because, as the NSC determined, "We are not prepared to risk a Socialist or FRAP [Allende] victory, for fear of nationalization of U.S. investments" and "probable Communist influence" (146).