Personal Account of Journalist or Professor – education and deconstruction.com

Sand and Blood

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The Book of the Week is “Sand and Blood, America’s Stealth War on the Mexico Border” by John Carlos Frey, published in 2019. This investigative journalist did his homework. He actually practiced what was known in the 1970’s as New Journalism, experiencing for himself what migrants go through. He hired a people-smuggler, and his account was factual and professional. He did NOT throw a pity-party, did NOT spout the kind of daily, tiresome, self-absorbed minutiae of American reality-shows on the idiot box.

The author pointed out that the major focus of U.S. military action is currently at the Mexico border (rather than in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Central America, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans, Syria, etc., etc., etc.). The twentieth century saw a large increase in demand for farm workers in the southwestern states to provide food for the nation. Between 1942 and 1964, a federal law called the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement allowed Mexican migrants to enter the U.S. to work. They were provided with housing but were ill-treated and exploited. For the next couple of decades, the country was distracted by various military actions around the world.

Finally, in 1986, president Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which conditionally (regardless of smears and lies in sound-bites on the idiot box; as an aside– undocumented immigrants have never been allowed to get welfare services, Social Security or Medicare without identity papers) let illegals earn permanent U.S. residency and eventually, citizenship.

In 1991, president George H.W. Bush signed a bill with a new immigration goal: to use the American military to target drug-smugglers, so Border Patrol could focus on catching illegal-border-crossers.

In December 1993, president Bill Clinton signed NAFTA, which caused more poverty in Mexico. It is not rocket science to infer that more poverty will lead to stronger motivation in more migrants to seek a better life in a land that is conveniently nearby. In 1996, Clinton helped enact a law that denied any and all immigrants due process if they were convicted of an aggravated felony (i.e., entering the U.S. illegally).

In 1994, California governor Pete Wilson was reelected on the scapegoating-illegals-ticket via the passage of Proposition 187. Up until that year, the childhood residence of the author of the book, in the Tijuana River Valley, just north of the Mexico border– was a demilitarized zone in which Mexicans and Americans could freely (at no-cost and with no harassment) enjoy beautiful nature on either side of the border. By the mid-1990’s, the border was a war zone. For, a U.S. Marines and Green-Berets task force was on the job.

After 9/11, the War on Terror was in full swing, yet the initiative caught zero terrorists who had illegally crossed the border. Bloated bureaucracy soon followed, with the burgeoning of the multiple new sheriffs in town: Homeland Security– the boss of INS, Border Patrol, ICE and Customs and Border Protection. By 2005, the border-protection budget had soared to $40.2 billion. That could have paid for a lot of social and education programs instead. Unsurprisingly, the whole border security apparatus became a Self-Regulatory-Organization (translation: fox guarding the hen house).

An infrastructure, security, aircraft, data-processing and spying extravaganza ensued, what with military contractors jumping on the gravy train in winning business from the U.S. government, as the contractors made the following political donations in 2012 (which included but were not limited to):

Barack Obama: $127,000 from Lockheed Martin and about $191,000 from Boeing;

Senator Charles Schumer: $49,500 from Lockheed Martin; and

Senator Lindsey Graham: $16,500 from Boeing.

That said, every politician begins his or her career with such high hopes and idealistic goals. As one of the most powerful men in the world, the American president begins his first term planning to do a big project or perhaps a bunch of them on the same issue– that brings health, education or social benefits to the American people– for which he will be remembered, he hopes, forever.

However, in recent decades especially, with so many factors out of his control, such as

term-limits;
the lack of time to review proposed and existing policies, legislation and issues– which increases the power of special-interest groups’ financial influence on all elected officials at all levels of government. And those officials’ behavior and votes can affect his popularity;
vicious political enemies; and
previous failed attempts at the same programs that just happened to lose their propaganda wars, etc.,

he ends up playing cheerleader for his agenda in between countering smears and lies against him for every little thing.

Here is a brief rundown of the “legacy lottery” of sorts of the last sixtyish years– accomplishments the president and his supporters argued were beneficial to society– for which each president became best known; the programs that were started or were amended on his watch that endure to this day (a few failures bear mentioning), though they have waxed and waned reputation-wise and funding-wise, through the decades.

PLEASE NOTE: viewing or reading one source of historical info is never sufficient for providing an accurate picture of anyone or any event (not even one book.) This blogger suggests reading at least tens of books (if possible) on one era or events detailed in personal accounts or about one person with historical backdrop, that are clearly labeled non-fiction. Even then, there is propagandizing. The following should be supplemented with further readings.

JFK-Peace Corps (ironic, because young Americans are serving other countries), EEOC. A lot happened in less than three years; though he did inherit oodles of family-power and money.
Lyndon B. Johnson– Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare, Medicaid, Project Head Start; five years crowded with incident.
Richard Nixon-First Term: EPA, Clean Air Act of 1970. Was always angry, resentful and vengeful for NOT inheriting immense family-power and money. Second Term: Insisted he was not a crook!
Gerald Ford-??? Too short a tenure to do much on short notice, and didn’t inherit huge family-power and money.
Jimmy Carter-Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (Superfund program)– almost completely gutted in recent years; his administration was taken hostage in various ways.
Ronald Reagan-First Term: Renewed Voting Rights Act and made MLK Day a federal holiday, but only under grass-roots political pressure from civil rights groups. Second Term: Enriched profiteers in the criminal justice industry by signing a drug-enforcement bill, but did raise awareness of the high costs of drug and alcohol-related problems.
George H.W. Bush-Passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, and an amendment to the Clean Air Act and yet, oil-profiteered for himself; this was one cause of his propaganda-war loss on his reelection bid.
Bill Clinton-First Term: Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993; tried to implement a national-healthcare plan, which turned out to be a dress rehearsal; grade “A” for effort. Second Term: Signed some laws that helped children and families with healthcare, foster care and adoption, but he lost the propaganda war historically.
George W. Bush-First Term: Unfortunately succeeded in passing the No Child Left Behind Act– but did raise awareness of the high costs of running education like a business. Enriched medical-industry profiteers by partially privatizing Medicare in a massive overhaul. Second Term: proposed privatizing Social Security, and proposed immigration reform while advocating for more funding for beefing up military presence at the Mexican border (igniting all sorts of controversies), but it was his entire disaster, military-conflict, and oil profiteering-oriented tenure that caused him to lose his propaganda war historically, big-time.
Barack Obama–First Term: While putting out fires of his immediate predecessor, signed an amendment to an anti-hate-crime law and repealed DADT. Second Term: Signed the Affordable Care Act, whose way was paved for him in the mid-1990’s; tenuous win thus far and needs lots of modifications– but a major feat. And need it be said? Didn’t inherit family hegemony and ginormous wealth.
Donald Trump-Proposed building a Mexican-border wall! No one knows its current status. Did wonders for profiteers (his family and cronies) in health, labor and the environment by signing numerous Executive Orders. Inherited massive family-power and money.
Joseph Biden-Spent his first year putting out fires of his immediate predecessor. He’s a transition president like Ford, and also didn’t inherit superlative family-power and money.

All of the above presidents have had to make serious ethical compromises in order to try to secure their legacies; pursuant to the amount of power wielded over them by the opposition-party during their time in office. Those who won the “profiteering lottery” favored money over people without a second thought. And, ALL of them felt they needed to do politically expedient military spending, or else their impact on history might suffer.

Incidentally, one turning point in the history of the McCarthy Era occurred when the Republican U.S. senator from Wisconsin, criticized the military. After that, it was downhill for him. One turning point in the history of the Trump administration occurred when the Republican U.S. president from New York State, criticized the military. After that, it was a faster downfall for him.

Anyway, notwithstanding the humungous amount of taxpayer money diverted to militarization of the border, “A weakening [U.S.] economy helped slow migration more than fences did.”

Read the book to learn: about Boeing’s epic fail; why certain areas have no deterrents to migrants; why the government can’t even say how ineffective its militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border has been; how migrants risk their lives; about the smuggling cartels; about a Native American reservation and a church near the border; about how frustrating the U.S. border’s complaint-processing system is; and much more about recent conditions / deaths at the border.

City on Fire

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“The continuing protests drew upon deep-seated malaise, with a population who felt they were stuck with a leader they hadn’t chosen, running a government that didn’t listen to them, in a city whose housing they could not afford, and with wages and an economy that were going nowhere.”

The above happens to be about Hong Kong in 2019, according to the author.

The Book of the Week is “City on Fire, The Fight for Hong Kong” by Antony Dapiran, published in 2020.

The author described: the myriad complications (historical, political, cultural and social) of Hong Kong’s existence that led to its unrest and the unrest itself, in 2019.

In September 2018, a high-speed railway station opened in West Kowloon in Hong Kong, across the border from mainland China. The new hub made travel faster and easier. But around the same time, China’s government agency controlling immigration and customs and border-control, proposed a new law that offended the democratic-minded Hong Kongers who knew it would impinge on their civil rights. One aspect of the proposed law also dealt with extradition, which had become a hot-button topic after a murder was committed and the victim’s family had become politically active.

Legally, Hong Kong was supposed to be self-governing. Nevertheless, China’s human-rights abuses have been on the increase. Among other actions that have made Hong Kong less of a democracy– beginning in June 2015, Beijing (the seat of China’s government) sentenced a few hundred civil-rights attorneys to jail, so thereafter, dissidents have been less well defended.

The author related that a lot of violence all at once has erupted in Hong Kong in recent decades, such as in 2003 and 2014, for many reasons. The general cause is that Beijing was grabbing more power over Hong Kong. The latter year saw election-law changed so that only Beijing-endorsed candidates were allowed to try to get elected to Hong Kong’s government.

In 2014, memorable historical incidents received names such as Occupy Central protests, Umbrella and Sunflower movements. Hong Kong residents who resented Beijing’s political interference adopted a yellow ribbon as their symbol, while the opposition adopted a blue ribbon.

As 2019 progressed and Hong Kongers once again took to the streets in protest, they got better and better at resisting law enforcement’s weaponry: police batons, pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets. The protesters began wearing face masks or gas masks, goggles and hard hats. They communicated via social media. The protesters agreed to disagree, even though they fell into two factions: violent and non-violent, and were free to take part in whichever activities they wanted to.

A major aspect of firing of tear gas, is that it disperses crowds by: producing physical symptoms that cause in its victims an overwhelming urge to flee in a stampede– giving the illusion of a riot, of sudden movement that looks violent, angry and hostile, when moments prior, the large gathering might have been peaceful and even cheerful.

The media that served as the mouthpiece for Beijing, described protesters as “rioting.” When protesters’ actions were labeled as such, a court controlled by China was permitted to sentence protesters to up to ten years in prison.

Read the book to learn of: new methods adopted by law enforcement that generated more anger, resentment and violence among protesters; the unfortunate remarks that triggered international incidents; the 2019 turning point that sapped the morale of protesters; a November 2019 law that was passed by the U.S. Congress concerning Hong Kong; and why China doesn’t simply march into Hong Kong and entirely take it over.

By the way, here is a little ditty about why the U.S.A. continues to have democracy.

DEMOCRACY IN THE U.S.A.

sung to the tune of “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.” with apologies to John Mellencamp.

We’re FROM different countries
but NEEDS-are-met even in the smaller towns.
Patriots in wars, D.A.R.’s, July 4th
going crack, boom, bam!

DEM-ah-cra-cy in the U.S.A.
DEM-ah-cra-cy in the U.S.A.
DEM-ah-cra-cy in the U.S.A.
yeah, yeah
Rule-of-law in the U.S.A.

We-can-speak FREEly with our families.
We-can-joke with our friends.
With chances to work and succeed,
the future’s in our hands.

Some are Left and some are Right.
Plenty of entertainment to watch to-night.
With freedom of religion,
you know that we just might,
be-enjoying-life in the U.S.A. Hey

We have choices everywhere.
The-roots-of-our founding, we can’t igNORE.
When we HAVE a lapse in governance,
brave speakers help our system enDURE.

There was Abe Lincoln
Margaret Chase Smith
Shirley Chisholm

(They were heroes!)

Daniel Ellsberg
Karen Silkwood
Dan Choi

(They were heroes!)

Spotlight on Ed Snowden
and-Roosevelt, you know, EleaNOR.

Grokking in the U.S.A. Hey

TABloid-drama-queens in the U.S.A.
KEEPing-up-with-the Joneses in the U.S.A.
First-World-problems in the U.S.A. yeah, yeah

Evolving in the U.S.A.!

Unforgetting – BONUS POST

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The Bonus Book of the Week is “Unforgetting, A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas” by Robert Lovato, published in 2020. El Salvadorans are more populous in Los Angeles than any other major American city. The author wrote about his own family’s involvement in the politics, economics and violence that have given rise to the stereotypes surrounding El Salvador in recent decades.

It took the author decades to get his father (Ramon, born in 1922) to describe the traumas he experienced throughout his life, and especially as a nine-year old at the start of a revolution of Salvadorans of indigenous descent. Ramon’s parents weren’t married; plus he was of indigenous descent, so he was cursed by society at birth. Ramon’s father too, was illegitimate, but inherited a coffee-bean plantation, which made him a wealthy man, until the market crashed in summer 1931. However, Ramon was denied his family’s riches. He lived in a shack with his mother. A few valuable family connections did allow him to move to the United States for a better life.

Born in 1963, the author grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. As a teenager, he rebelled against his father’s lies, beatings and organized-crime dealings. He began hanging out with a drinking, drugging, petty-crime-committing crowd. But learning more about his family’s and homeland’s histories helped him to better understand his own and his father’s actions and failings. In his early twenties, the author found religion.

El Salvador was just one of many countries whose tribal, religious and political conflicts became American-taxpayer-funded military quagmires that started in the second half of the twentieth century; schemes gone awry initially backed by one or another U.S. president have persisted ever since. Pursuant to declassified documents and insiders– the CIA, other intelligence services and special-forces have engaged in top-secret international adventures in Korea, Guatemala, Cuba, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, etc., etc., etc.

The Reagan Era ushered in secret CIA-training of “counter-insurgency” techniques (translation: the atrocities of a dirty little war on par with Argentina’s) among young males fighting in El Salvador, with the ostensible goal of making the world safe for American-style democracy. Hilarity did not ensue. The usual hypocrisy, cover-ups, historical revisionism, and far-reaching devastation of war later on, did.

There occurred not just destruction, deaths, the trauma of fighting, family decimation, but also unspeakable war crimes such as massacres (via firing squads, even in a church(!)) of indigenous Salvadorans and rapes of females of all ages, in large numbers. “Despite the horrific civil war ravaging El Salvador [that began in 1980] the Reagan administration denied 97 percent of all Salvadoran asylum claims.”

The author listed just a few of the times and locations of mass killings, including:

December 1981, El Junquillo

August 1982, El Calabazo

February 1983, Las Hojas

Read the book to learn about war’s estimated 1980’s death toll, the fate of its perpetrators, how families tried to get more details on the fate of their disappeared loved ones, what happened in November 1989 (hint: there was a backlash in which the author played a role), and much more about why the author thought it was so important to investigate El Salvador’s past, rather than forget all that trauma.

Here We Are

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The Book of the Week is “Here We Are, American Dreams, American Nightmares” by Aarti Shahani, published in 2019.

In the mid-1990’s, according to New York State, the Manhattan electronics store co-owned by Shahani’s father, was a front for Colombia’s Cali drug cartel. The indictment had thirteen counts.

After 9/11, the U.S. federal government agency Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) was established for the purpose of finding and deporting immigrants, both illegal and those in special circumstances, with no statute of limitations.

Shahani’s uncle Ratan (in the latter category– he had a green card) “… missed his [ICE deportation] flight and spent more nights in detention, on the taxpayer dime…” The financial institution with which he had an account– Broadway National Bank– had laundered $123 million through various accounts. It “…paid a fine of $4 million, and no bank executive served a single day in jail.”

One question Americans might want to ask, however, is how much IS the “taxpayer dime” when it comes to funding illegal immigrants? Is the actual dollar value a nickel a month per American?? Or a thousand dollars a day per American??

Of course, it is impossible to fully account for the qualitative impacts, good and bad, that illegals have on society as a whole. More specifically, they might make undocumented (excuse the pun) positive economic, cultural, social or athletic contributions, but partake of limited resources such as healthcare and education that diminish quality thereof for citizens. (For more info, see this blog’s posts: The Opposite of Woe, Call Me American, full circle (sic), Patriot Number One, The Snakehead, Where the Wind Leads, The Fox Hunt, and Scorpions For Breakfast.)

Anyway, this suspenseful story recounted a series of traumatic events of an immigrant family from India, interspersed with vignettes of the family’s hardships (due to the author’s father’s naivete; plus swindlers, errors and bad luck) that led the author to become an activist. She ended up delivering lectures to audiences consisting of “lawyers, journalists, social workers, congressional staffers, city council members and families in crisis.”

Read the book to learn all about it.

In Bolivia

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The Book of the Week is “In Bolivia, the Adventurous Odyssey Through the Americas’ Least-Known Nation” by Eric Lawlor, published in 1989. In the late 1980’s, the author visited various parts of Bolivia, speaking with natives and tourists to learn how the culture evolved, based on its history.

There was labor unrest in the Bolivian mining industry in 1919, 1922, 1927, 1942 and 1967. Over the years, thousands of unarmed, protesting miners of tin or silver died when fired on by the military. In the 1942 confrontation, the government blamed the deaths on Communist agitators, and later, Nazis. The government sociopathically crushed the miners’ revolts every time.

The author visited Santa Cruz, which put out such products as oil, cotton, sugar, rice and coffee. Its major industry was black-market cocaine, sold by small-time dealers. They were left alone because the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) of the United States was interested in catching only kingpin Roberto Suarez. After having made about half a billion dollars a year– some from supplying America with about one third of its illegal cocaine– he was caught in July 1988.

Prior to that, there was a cocaine gravy train. Pilots made lots of money flying the drug to Miami. Even teenage boys made a living, stomping barefoot on kerosene-marinated coca leaves to process them. They were rumored to develop skin cancer. The author was offered but declined a job drug-running, from two different men he’d just met. He bought a small amount of cocaine, and was advised to stash it in his underpants. He was actually fortunate that it was stolen from its hiding place in his hotel room, because shortly afterwards, the DEA came around and interrogated him.

More and more farmers were finding the growing of coca more lucrative than food crops. The Bolivian government warned the drug lords in advance that American law enforcement and the Bolivian army were going to raid their labs. They fled to Panama. Another way America made a token gesture of cracking down on the cocaine industry was to threaten to withhold about $60 million dollars of annual aid. Ordinary Bolivians were angry at U.S president Reagan for crashing their economy and being a hypocrite. They said, “We’ll stop exporting cocaine when he stops exporting weapons.”

The author visited a region in Bolivia called La Loma. The tribe who lived there depended on a river for their very simple lifestyle. There was plenty of fish, and they were happy. The people in Tarija– near the border of Argentina– were unhappy. For, they went on strike to demand that the government build the power plant it had promised them six months prior. The author interviewed a Bolivian army soldier who told him the country should be ruled by the military. The military was nonpartisan, and its goal was to do only what was best for the country, not what was best for the politicians. If it achieved its goal of improving the economy, however, the military budget would grow with it.

The author was trapped in Tarija for weeks. He couldn’t leave by bus, train or plane, and there were guarded barricades all around the city. He spoke with a man who had fought in the Bolivian war with the Paraguayans over disputed territory in the Chaco in 1932. Many more Bolivians died of dehydration, starvation and disease, than from their wounds.

The Bolivians fought incompetently, lacking training and resources. The war ended in 1935, due to attrition on both sides. Bolivians’ emotional turmoil was comparable to that of Americans’ after Vietnam and Watergate. Trust had been broken between the Bolivian people and their leaders. So revolution (during which ninety thousand people died) ensued in 1952. But the aforementioned interviewee thought Bolivians were worse off after the revolution.

Some changes were made: nationalization of the tin mines, land reform, and Indians got the vote. But Bolivia went bankrupt in 1956. The United States instituted a stabilization program there. The military led the country again until 1985. The takeaway from Bolivia’s governments through the decades, is that dictators are largely similar the world over:

“He had wealth and status… He produced nothing and provided no leadership. He was not very smart and had few skills… his contempt for his countrymen and his belief in his own superiority was not typical of what is normally considered moral.”

Read the book to learn a smattering about Bolivia’s history of missionaries, violent occurrences, and mindset over the last several centuries.

A Dedicated Life – BONUS POST

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The Bonus Book of the Week is “A Dedicated Life, Journalism, Justice, and a Chance for Every Child” by David Lawrence, Jr., published in 2018.

“More money is almost never the right first response. Rather, we need to begin by figuring out how well we are doing with the money we already have.”

-the author, on embarking on a quest to improve the lives of preschool children, beginning in 1999 in Miami-Dade County, Florida.

Born in March 1942 in New York City, the author was raised Catholic in a wealthy family of eventually, nine children. His father was a journalist covering politics in New York. In 1948, the family moved to a residence that was a six-hour drive north of the city to tend to a farm that had animals and food-crops.

The author retired as a newspaper executive at the end of 1998, to take on a new career as an advocate for young children. There were two possible ways to institute “high quality” (the author never exactly defined what he meant by that) pre-kindergarten for all, regardless of need, in the entire state of Florida:

Lobbying the Florida state legislature to pass a bill, or
Propose a Constitutional amendment, voted on by the people, during an election for state officials.

The latter required: that hundreds of thousands of Floridians sign a petition; that an expensive campaign be launched in order to raise awareness and promote the initiative and get people to vote for the amendment. Unfortunately, the opposition always launches a campaign to smear such an initiative (or oppose it in order to smear a prospective candidate for office or an incumbent who would run for reelection– in planning for the next election; for example, currently– 2022 and 2024).

Anyway, read the book to learn whether the author and millions of others, in November 2002, actually achieved their ultimate goal (Hint: over the course of decades, through the cumbersome political process that is democracy– such radical, widespread change happens in baby steps; with the aid of the trick of telling voters that funding for the new program wouldn’t come from raising taxes!), and learn much more about his philosophy, careers, and fundraising successes for good causes (for which, it appears, he deserves bragging rights.)

Life’s A Campaign – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Life’s A Campaign, What Politics Has Taught Me About Friendship, Rivalry, Reputation, and Success” by Chris Matthews, published in 2007. This quick, lighthearted read gave a few tips, through a series of specific examples– some autobiographical– on how to develop, manage and maintain political relationships. Incidentally, thirteen years after the book’s writing, the author– a journalist and TV-show host– had become psychologically burnt out from the political shenanigans he covered.

The author advised the reader who attended a political event to always stand on the far right side in a group photo. That way, the reader’s name would appear first in the photo’s caption in the news article. He also briefly described the exploits of Theodore Roosevelt, Churchill and JFK, saying they were all war heroes before becoming politicians. However, he neglected to mention that each man had a crack public relations team that glorified their histories and papered over their past failures, to help them get elected. Read the book to learn more about the author’s and others’ political adventures.

“The sad truth we learn from all of this is that it’s one thing to call your critics ‘liars,’ but to regain the political edge you must prove they are.” The author was referring to John Kerry’s unsuccessful 2004 presidential bid, but such dishonesty is part and parcel of politics, egged on by the media. Both politicians and the media have gotten wily messaging and optics down to a science (but right now, NOT literally!).

As is well known, the media are currently whipping up a frenzy over– not a presidential campaign– but over a highly contagious, potentially fatal virus-pandemic that has variants. As is now the norm, the messengers and their bosses’ utterances have been characterized by lack of transparency. Obviously, they benefit vaccine makers, mask sellers, COVID drug peddlers etc.; most of those messengers and bosses are failing to disclose their financial interests in the profit-seeking aspects of the whole kit and caboodle. Ho hum.

A Long Way From Home – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “A Long Way From Home, Growing Up In the American Heartland” by Tom Brokaw, published in 2002.

Born in February 1940 in Webster South Dakota, Brokaw wrote of his first 22 years. He described the 1940’s and 1950’s Missouri-River infrastructure projects, among others, of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, whom his father assisted. Previously, all kinds of fish could be caught in the river.

Particularly noteworthy was the literal and figurative power the U.S. president possessed upon the 1953 completion of the flow-altering, water-corralling, energy-generating achievement: “President Eisenhower flipped a switch in the Oval Office to activate the eight turbines that, when powered by the focused force of the water, would transmit electricity to seven states.”

Additional curious information that represented the tenor of the times included the 1950’s South Dakota test of manhood handed down from father to son: pheasant hunting in wetlands, tall prairie grass, sorghum and cornfields.

Read the book to learn about many other cultural aspects of Brokaw’s childhood; a bygone era.

Beneath the Tamarind Tree

The Book of the Week is “Beneath the Tamarind Tree, A Story of Courage, Family, and the Lost Schoolgirls of Boko Haram” by Isha Sesay, published in 2019.

In April 2014, Boko Haram members (Muslim extremists) abducted a few hundred female students from a boarding school in Chibok in Nigeria. For the attention whores of the world, a Twitter account was immediately started, inviting comments. The American news cycle ended quickly, but trauma for the victims and their families– even for the girls who were released (fewer than half at the book’s writing)– will never end.

Apparently, the trading relationship between the United States and Nigeria wasn’t a sufficient motivator to resolve the situation peacefully. In 2017, there occurred more than $9 billion worth of oil, cocoa, cashew nuts, minerals and animal feed exchanged between the two.

The author had a vested interest in seeing the girls’ safe release, as her mother’s family hailed from Sierra Leone on the continent of Africa, and her family had lived there. So her personal experience put her in a better position to get the story, more than other TV journalists. Even so, information-gathering through personal interviews could be life-threatening, as Boko Haram was a terrorist group comprised of sociopathic sadists with weaponry– child-soldiers– who had occasional episodes of sympathy but usually had no qualms about committing looting and arson, to boot.

The author felt that the 2016 U.S. presidential election eclipsed all media coverage of her Nigeria story– more media coverage would have swayed the world to take action on behalf of the abducted girls. Possibly. But– in the 1990’s, American media outlets covered Nigeria only insofar as to give it a reputation for fraudsters who got Americans to fall for inheritance scams via airmail or email.

So that is all that most people here know about Nigeria. They usually don’t actively seek news from the European media outlets, such as the BBC, the Guardian, Al Jazeera or Reuters. “Breaking News” coverage on their favorite celebrities, politicians and themselves, is much more of a priority. Sadly.

Read the book to learn many more details.

Loyalties – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Loyalties, A Son’s Memoir” by Carl Bernstein, published in 1989.

Born in 1944 in the D.C. area, the author suffered the anguish of having parents who believed in Communism and were punished for it. They celebrated the following holidays: Passover, May Day, Paris Commune Day, July Fourth, and the anniversary of the Russian Revolution– October Division.

In March 1947, president Harry Truman signed the “Loyalty Order” which was a law that required all government employees take the Loyalty Oath. The Oath treated people as though they were already guilty, for starters.

FBI head J. Edgar Hoover was secretly feeding Truman information (which would help him get reelected in 1948) on his political enemies in exchange for enforcing the Loyalty Order. As is well known, Hoover and Senator Joseph McCarthy had whipped up a false frenzy of fear that lots of people who believed in Communism were plotting to overthrow the American government. So part of the excuse Truman could use for terrorizing (mostly wrongly accused) Americans, was that they were members of a political party (Communist) that was illegal.

The author asserted that Hoover’s real motive in holding hearings (from 1948 to 1950) in connection with people who refused to take the Loyalty Oath (different and separate from HUAC’s hearings) was to eliminate the government union– whose members were the accused. Such progressive community organizers were fighting for civil rights, etc. They were a bee in Hoover’s bonnet. The hearings trampled on due process in a variety of ways, a few of which included:

the accused weren’t told whom their accusers were (the finger-pointers remained anonymous) and the latter weren’t allowed to be confronted, either;

the accused weren’t allowed to have an attorney present; and

the accusation alone served as evidence (!)– no proof was needed for the accused to be subjected to punishment meted out by the Loyalty Review Board, an FBI committee.

Read the book to learn of the ideological tenor of the times that shaped the social circles of the author’s parents–their trials and tribulations, and the emotional trouble these caused the author.