What Book Are You Reading at the Moment?

[Hastur]

One of my childhood friends' father was the CEO of one of our biggest arms companies. He once told me a story about Haile Selassie. They got an order from Ethiopia for a lot of napalm. The thing that stood out was that it wasn't from the army or the air force but from their version of the IRS. That raised some eyebrows and the Swedes wanted to know why they needed napalm. The Ethiopians explained that they had some problems with tax collection and wanted to make some examples of some villages.
They never sold them any napalm.

[Speaker to Animals]

Rastaman has no love for you.

[heydaralon]

One of my childhood friends' father was the CEO of one of our biggest arms companies. He once told me a story about Haile Selassie. They got an order from Ethiopia for a lot of napalm. The thing that stood out was that it wasn't from the army or the air force but from their version of the IRS. That raised some eyebrows and the Swedes wanted to know why they needed napalm. The Ethiopians explained that they had some problems with tax collection and wanted to make some examples of some villages.
They never sold them any napalm.

It is a fascinating story man. Haile Selassie was leader of one of two African countries that did not get colonized during the scramble for Africa period (Liberia being the other). He was a heroic icon. Jamaican Rastafarians viewed him as a literal god. Even when Italy invaded (payback for when they tried to invade decades earlier, and Menelik II killed like 8000 of them) and Selassie fled, he was widely revered and romanticized. But the country was feudalistic, and he was quite out of touch, especially towards the end. The famine really fucked up the farmers, and he tried setting price controls on Ag+taxi driving etc, so various sectors of the economy rose against him, until finally the army left him and the Dergue took over. Mengistu and his cronies declared Ethiopia a communist country and in all likelihood had Selassie smothered with a pillow, and buried him under an outhouse. Then between 1-2 million Ethiopians died during the Civil War and War with Somalia and the famine. This is a brutal conflict and 15 year period few in the West know about. It might have been better if the company had given Selassie the napalm...

[Speaker to Animals]

Every Negro who is proud of his race must be ashamed of the way in which Haile Selassie surrendered himself to the white wolves of Europe. These statements may be considered very severe, and in fact, they are. We could have been otherwise apologetic and sympathetic, but that would have been only if we were dealing with a Coptic Priest or a Religious Monk and not a[n] Emperor who held and presided over the political trust of twelve million people of his own country, and the political destiny of the entire Negro race. This little misguided Emperor could not realise that he held in his hands the political trust of the hundreds of millions of Negroes of the world, men and women, who were looking up toward the firm establishment of political sovereignty, and that Ethiopia, like Liberia and Haiti were to them prizes of glory to be perpetuated and strengthened in the maintenance of the dignity of that black race that other men have claimed to be incompetent, inferior and unworthy, which every black man must disprove.

Marcus Garvey

[Fife]

Have you seen this one, StA? Coming out this fall. You may have read them all already, I'm going to check it out.

The Best of Jerry Pournelle

[heydaralon]

I just finished the Stand audiobook. Kind of a dud. I felt meh. Should have spent more time with Randall Flagg and gone more into the torture/crucifixion stuff. The ending was the definition of deus ex machina.

[Fife]

I saw some discussion of Bletchley Park, Turing, &c., overnight in the yellow vests thread.

I'm reminded of one of my all-time favorites (and that's saying something, bucco) from Leo Marks.

Several of you would dig it the most. From Fife's short list:

Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War 1941-1945

In 1942, with a black-market chicken under his arm, Leo Marks left his father's famous bookshop, 84 Charing Cross Road, and went to war. He was twenty-two and a cryptopgraher of genius. In Between Silk and Cyanide, his critically acclaimed account of his time in SOE, Marks tells how he revolutionised the code-making techniques of the Allies, trained some of the most famous agents dropped into France including Violette Szabo and 'the White Rabbit', and why he wrote haunting verse including his 'The Life that I have' poem. He reveals for the first time the disastrous dimensions of the code war between SOE and the Germans in Holland; how the Germans were fooled into thinking a Secret Army was operating in the Fatherland itself, and how and why he broke General de Gaulle's secret code. Both thrilling and poignant, Marks's book is truly one of the last great Second World War memoirs.

[Fife]

Dismantling the Republic

What passes for American History today, especially as it pertains to the type of government under which we are now constrained to live, is largely a collection of myths, fables, and legends, which have incrementally supplanted the truth until legend has become the new truth. Few people, for instance, realize that the republic which was founded in the last few years of the 18th century no longer exists.

In Dismantling the Republic, Jerry Brewer strips away fancy and fiction to show us that the republic actually died in 1865. Lincoln spent four years trying to kill it, and it finally succumbed at Appomattox. What we have today has been in the making ever since. . . . we have arrived at a government that has metamorphosed into something that abuses citizens at home and destroys civilizations abroad. Whatever it is, it is not the republic our Revolutionary patriots gave us, nor what they envisioned.

[Fife]

Some of you all like to talk about 1984, and I know a couple of you who have actually read it as adults. It's worth your time if you are interested in current year politics.

Two Ways Our World Resembles “1984”
It had been at least 25 years, and reading '1984' today was a very different experience.

Truth decay might help explain why many people—even intelligent sensible, grounded ones—seem to feel like Alice after she tumbled down the rabbit hole.

“We are living in an era when sanity is controversial and insanity is just another viewpoint,” the economist Thomas Sowell recently stated.

Few Americans today would deny, I think, that truth is under assault. It's one of the few ideas on which Left and Right can agree. The disagreement arises over who are the greater transgressors of truth.

This is not a trivial matter. As FEE president Lawrence Reed recently observed, truth and freedom are inseparable.

“The first casualty on the slippery slope to tyranny is the truth,” wrote Reed. “If you wish to live in freedom, you must first commit yourself to truth in all things.”

[heydaralon]

Some of you all like to talk about 1984, and I know a couple of you who have actually read it as adults. It's worth your time if you are interested in current year politics.

Two Ways Our World Resembles “1984”
It had been at least 25 years, and reading '1984' today was a very different experience.

Truth decay might help explain why many people—even intelligent sensible, grounded ones—seem to feel like Alice after she tumbled down the rabbit hole.

“We are living in an era when sanity is controversial and insanity is just another viewpoint,” the economist Thomas Sowell recently stated.

Few Americans today would deny, I think, that truth is under assault. It's one of the few ideas on which Left and Right can agree. The disagreement arises over who are the greater transgressors of truth.

This is not a trivial matter. As FEE president Lawrence Reed recently observed, truth and freedom are inseparable.

“The first casualty on the slippery slope to tyranny is the truth,” wrote Reed. “If you wish to live in freedom, you must first commit yourself to truth in all things.”

What annoys the shit out of me with 1984 is that Democrats and progressives always quote it in relation to Trump or conservatives, when in reality, their entire worldview encapsulates the book. This latest Russia Gate shit is a prime example.

Also irl Obrien would not be as chill as he was. He acted like he above it all, when it reality under that regime he'd be sweating and shitting his pants, clammoring for results, knowing that soon he'd be purged as well.