Politics – Miscellaneous – Page 32 – education and deconstruction.com

The Snakehead

The Book of the Week is “The Snakehead” by Patrick Radden Keefe, published in 2009. This ebook recounts the details of a pivotal human-smuggling incident involving people of Chinese descent.

In early June 1993, a boat hit a sandbar in Breezy Point in the borough of Queens (New York City) in New York State. Most of its occupants were illegal immigrants originally from China. They were “smuggled” rather than “trafficked” in that they had willingly bribed a “snakehead” to help them move to the United States without identification documents, knowing the risks of their journey full well. Trafficked individuals also have the desire for a better life, but are usually unaware that they will be sold as property.

Organized crime in Chinatown in New York City in the 1980’s was rampant, consisting of not just arrangements to further illegal immigration, but of extortion, gang warfare, conspiracy, hostage-taking and money laundering. “But there was only so much money in shakedowns, burglaries and kidnappings.” The heroin trade carried heavy prison sentences. On the other hand, there was big money (approximately $30,000 for the snakehead per person) in human smuggling and it carried light prison sentences.

At the start of the 1990’s, two major reasons that immigration laws were lenient for political asylum seekers from China were: 1) The 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre had reminded the world of oppression in China, and 2) The country had a draconian population-limiting political system, allowing women to bear only one child and thereafter be forced to have an abortion or the men, to have forced sterilization. Another factor that contributed to the arrival of an excessive number of illegals on U.S. shores around 1990 was the fact the the Immigration and Naturalization Service was a poorly treated, underfunded and understaffed agency, that competed with the customs department– whose contraband confiscations made it a political darling.

Read the book to learn: why, around 1990, there was also a shift in the transportation method, routes and entry points for illegal smuggling; which perpetrators got caught and their fates; and the valid arguments on both sides of the debate over the legal and ethical issues on people’s entering a nation without the legal means to do so.

Webs of Power… – Bonus Post

This blogger “clicked” through the ebook, “Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising” by Starhawk, published in 2002.

The ebook is the author’s description of what her activism is about. She explains that the way globalization is currently occurring is wrong because big corporations are favoring money over people. Greedy corporations (and governments) are destroying the earth and life on earth.

One specific way governments are allowing this, is through the World Trade Organization. The United States joined the Organization and signed the trade agreement called GATT. That agreement lets the Organization, whose member-countries’ representatives, appointed via cronyism, make laws whose disclosure is denied to the world. No hearings of their proceedings are permitted. The actions taken by this secret society affect workers and human rights worldwide and of course, the environment.

The negative consequences have included, for example, allowing poisons to permeate the world food supply, endangering species and keeping drug prices high, all to the benefit of global corporations. What is not a secret is that those companies have, in recent decades, increased their profitability by moving their production facilities to nations where they can get labor at minimal cost while avoiding pesky health, safety and environmental laws. The author argues that this has also resulted in significantly increased income inequality the world over.

Read the book to learn of additional ways greed and power hunger are wrecking the world, and the role the author has played, through planning and organizing protests, training protesters, protesting and writing in trying to prevent further harm; and of her various proposals for governance and allocating resources in ways that do the greatest good for the greatest number.

The Gentleman From New York – Bonus Post

This blogger skimmed “The Gentleman From New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan” by Godfrey Hodgson, published in 2000.

It is a long biography that details Moynihan’s careers as a Navy officer, sociological researcher and writer, Harvard professor, ambassador to the UN and four-term senator from New York State. Throughout, he received invaluable assistance from his wife, Liz.

In the early 1960’s Moynihan received a quality education, thanks to a scholarship and the GI Bill. He assisted several presidents, starting with JFK, in generating reports on social policy. Lyndon Johnson wanted to right the historic injustices of slavery and segregation. Moynihan was known as a thoughtful, moderately liberal Democrat.

After the Watts riots in the mid-1960’s, “urban studies” were trendy. Moynihan jumped on the bandwagon, teaching and writing about them. Professor James Coleman at Johns Hopkins University led a study of 570,000 children, 60,000 teachers and 4,000 schools, whose results were controversial. It found that student standardized test scores were higher when students were in classes with others who were more affluent and had better home environments than they; facilities and resources across schools were largely the same. A statistically significant number of the students who scored lower were of certain ethnic groups.

In 1966, Moynihan ran for president of the New York City Council, even though he and his family still lived in Washington D.C. In summer 1967, major urban areas in the U.S. saw rioting over Vietnam and racial tensions. Ironically, liberalism was the order of the day in the policies of legislation, political officeholders and reports from the media.

Moynihan shocked his contemporaries when he went to work for the Nixon White House in 1969. He and the president both wanted to implement solutions to American social and economic problems. He stayed a Democrat, though, and opposed the Vietnam War. Moynihan wrote a report that prompted accusations of racism, possibly due to misinterpretation. He suggested that people take a break from discussing racism, allowing the issues “benign neglect.” Amid the furor, a few people theorized that differences in “intelligence” between blacks and whites were due to genetics. He was still needled about his report decades later.

There is a bit of sloppy editing in the section describing the Moynihans’ and Clintons’ relationship in 1993. The latter were trying to push through the bill for national health care in the U.S. Moynihan repeatedly raised the issue that the costs of labor-intensive social programs, such as “… Medicaid doubled in the eight years of the Reagan administration, then doubled again in the eight (sic) years of the Bush administration.” That said, the following page might confuse readers when it says, “… slow the projected rate of growth in the cost of Medicare by one-half after years of double-digit growth…”

Nevertheless, read the book to learn everything you ever wanted to know about Moynihan’s viewpoints and writings.

The Law of the Jungle – Bonus Post

This blogger skimmed the ebook, “The Law of the Jungle” by Paul M. Barrett, published in 2014. This is the story of a decades-long court case involving oil contamination in the Amazonian rain forest of northeastern Ecuador, to which a number of cliches apply:

Pox on the houses of both the plaintiff and the defendant;

A man is known by the company he keeps; and

When you lie down with dogs, you get fleas.

Starting in 1993, the plaintiff, represented by a greedy, egotistical, loudmouthed, yet shrewd attorney– Steven Donziger– claimed that defendant, Texaco, and then successor Chevron oil company, had caused illness, deaths, and damage to the quality of life of thousands of farmers and tribesmen in Ecuador. The Amazonians were allegedly poisoned by the oil-contaminated streams where they fished, bathed and gathered drinking water. The oil company had established a presence in their villages since 1964, when it forged an agreement with the Ecuadorian government to drill on 3.5 million and later, 4 million acres in the Oriente region.

The author tells a suspenseful, controversial story that reveals valid arguments on both sides. There was evidence of serious disruption of villagers’ lives. This included cancer clusters and other health issues that plagued the Ecuadorians, pollution of the place where they lived, the unintended consequence of violent fighting for jobs and over income inequality between Indians and homesteaders, etc. directly attributable to the activities of, and inept cleanup of, oil that allowed spreading of toxic chemicals by, the petroleum companies. On the other hand, over the years, the economy of the country of Ecuador made great strides due to the companies’ building of, and heavy investment in, transportation infrastructure and the side effects of job creation and good political relations that would not have occurred but for the corporate presence in Ecuador.

According to the author, the plaintiff’s attorney went after “big oil” rather than “… a struggling national government responsible for letting down its people” because big oil had more sex appeal. It could also be that big oil had deeper pockets.

In sum, “The oil pollution suit was not unique. Ecuador’s judiciary had a well-earned reputation for corruption and chaos.”

Read the book to learn of the various sleazy tactics employed by both sides in the dispute, and to get a concise, eloquent summary of the whole story– read the “Conclusions” section of this ebook.

Toughing It Out

The Book of the Week is “Toughing It Out” by Claire Reed, published in 2012. This ebook is the autobiography of a “shrinking violet” turned political activist.

Reed was born in Brooklyn, New York in the late 1920’s into a relatively wealthy Jewish family typical for its generation. Her parents cared not a whit for her education, allowing her to miss school to spend time out-of-town with her wealthy friends. Her mother was an especially bad influence, conditioning her to believe that she should simply marry a rich man to have a good life. After the deaths of various of her relatives within a few years, and lacking income-producing skills and self-confidence, she was obliged to get married.

The author illustrates the American mentality of the rich in the immediate Postwar Era through several anecdotes on herself and her sexist husband, who was like her late father. One example involved a fur coat– the material object a wife needed to wear as a symbol of a husband’s ability to provide for his family and of his masculinity.

Read the book to learn how Reed overcame her low-self esteem problem, came to play a vital role in Congresswoman Bella Abzug’s political activities and came into her own as a productive member of society.

Jeffrey Sachs

The Book of the Week is “Jeffrey Sachs: The Strange Case of Dr. Shock and Mr. Aid” by Japhy Wilson, published in 2014. This ebook emphatically argues that the highly influential Ivy League economist Jeffrey Sachs has wreaked havoc on at least three nations’ economies in the last thirty years with his non-stop publishing, lecturing and implementation on and of, (in the author’s opinion) delusional, elitist, anti-communist, anti-union schemes; he is, arguably, an economics criminal, so to speak (the counterpart to a war criminal) in that the implementation of his policies caused deaths. As an aside, this blogger disagrees with the author’s spelling of “publically” rather than “publicly.”

Sachs has refused to acknowledge that his “shock therapy” method employed in Bolivia, Russia and Poland was a dismal failure. It was supposed to help them make the transition to capitalism through conferring responsibility for previously government-led distribution of goods and services, to private citizens without warning them of extreme measures to be imposed in accomplishing this. The countries were forced to adopt a model at the far opposite end of the spectrum of the welfare state.

Sachs’ first victim, Bolivia, was experiencing 60,000% inflation and 20% unemployment in the summer of 1985. By 1987, pursuant to Sachs’ plan, a free market had been created, but the costs included a 50% higher unemployment rate and a 40% lower real-wage level. Over the next five years, the mining and industry sectors lost jobs by the tens of thousands.

In Russia, a few powerful wealth owners were already experienced in “managing” assets, so their receiving additional private property– with no laws requiring them to treat their workers in a humane manner– made them even more exploitative. In the early 1990’s, leader Boris Yeltsin became a convert of Sachs. The result was mass corruption. On the other hand, this has helped the United States and other nations with already evolved capitalist systems to maintain their economic dominance in the world. This blogger is not saying such a goal is right or wrong, but merely suggesting that this might have been Sachs’ goal.

Sachs also helped the rich get richer in Uganda, by providing specially chosen farming families with certain resources, such as fertilizer and seeds, in a few villages. The goal was to have those politically connected farmers “… magically combine entrepreneurial self-interest with community spirit, based on a patronizing representation of the deserving poor.” This smacks of a similar kind of mentality in the New York City schools under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the early 2000’s, based on the mistaken notion that all students were bound for college. Sachs’ program started charging money for conferring some of its resources, “… which inevitably privileges those with the ability to pay.” Bloomberg imposed various policies (still in effect as of this writing), that inevitably privilege those students who have the ability to pay for private school, and testing and tutoring services. That is just the tip of the iceberg in both cases.

A World Trade Organization conference in Seattle in 2000 was discontinued because “… Suddenly, this orderly world of billionaire philanthropy and elite policymaking was overturned by massive street protests involving unions, NGOs, and activist groups, demanding an end to the global neoliberal agenda of free trade, privatization, and corporate power.”

Read the book to learn of additional outrages associated with Jeffrey Sachs.

A Matter of Opinion

The Book of the Week is “A Matter of Opinion” by Victor S. Navasky, published in 2005. This tome details the decades the author has spent working at the more than 150-year old, politically left-wing weekly opinion journal, The Nation.

Typical for a publication of its nature, The Nation, as of the book’s writing, had turned a profit for only three fiscal years of its existence. It is supposed to have for-profit status. During their histories, all such journals that derive most of their revenue from subscribers and a little from advertising, consider becoming a non-profit organization. The major traits of non-profits include: the ability to accept tax-deductible contributions, lower postage costs, and the fact that they are prohibited from endorsing political candidates and are restricted in their lobbying of lawmakers.

The Nation has been a party to various lawsuits in connection with defamation, intellectual property and free speech issues. One of its goals is to expose the truth about the activities of the American government. Navasky wrote, “… claims of national security are all too often a cloak for government lies, cover-ups, and bureaucratic disinformation.” Started in 1979, one suit brought by Harper & Row dragged on for years over The Nation’s releasing a story on President Ford’s pardoning of Richard Nixon prior to the release of Ford’s new book; Harper & Row spent an estimated $250,000, but it was seeking damages of $12,500.

In 1989, the tiny, financially struggling Nation wrote a satirical letter to Time, Inc., the target of hostile corporate takeover offers by Gulf + Western and Paramount with an offer of its own. It said, “… we can do better than Paramount’s $175 per share offer… our plan is to pledge the assets of Time, Inc. as collateral on the loan we take out to buy you so cash will be no problem for us.”

Read the book to learn of Navasky’s stories on all the issues involving the running of an opinion journal in the Twentieth Century, into the early years of the Twenty-First Century.

Of Spies and Spokesmen

The Book of the Week is “Of Spies and Spokesmen” by Nicholas Daniloff, published in 2008. This long memoir covers the author’s journalism career, which started in the late 1950’s at the London bureau of the newly formed wire service, United Press International.

Daniloff’s father was of Russian descent, and it was suggested to him that Russian expertise might be in demand in the future. He switched to the Moscow bureau, where he covered the Cold War. This blogger was a bit annoyed by the redundancy of two historical incidents recounted in this book: the U-2 Incident and Soviet leader Khrushchev’s ouster.

Daniloff wrote about various ethical issues of his profession and problems he encountered due to the stark cultural differences between the then-Soviet Union and the United States. The former’s media were entirely controlled by the government. In the early 1960’s, the two major press organizations were Izvestia and Pravda, meaning “news” and “truth.” This blogger has read elsewhere that the joke was that the News contained no truth, and the Truth contained no news. The author found this to be largely correct, as he witnessed a myriad of controversial incidents involving other journalists who had to be let go by their employers– the Soviet authorities accused them of injudicious language in their writings or relationships with certain Russians who were their news sources, or of being spies. “In those Cold War days, Soviet national newspapers seemed to delight in attacking Western correspondents and portraying them as hopeless drunks who behaved in boorish fashion.”

In the late 1960’s, the author became a White House correspondent. He then returned to the Soviet Union. Read the book to learn of: the oppressive environment under which citizens and expatriates suffered in the former Soviet Union, the ways the KGB tried to bait the author and the ordeal he underwent due to that environment, how Soviet-American relations changed through the decades of the latter half of the Twentieth Century, and the policies of the American government concerning source disclosure and specificity of new stories when officials supply information to journalists.

This is NPR – Bonus Post

This blogger skimmed the ebook, “This Is NPR: The First Forty Years” by Cokie Roberts, Susan Stamberg, Noah Adams, John Yostie, Renee Montagne, Ari Shapiro, David Folkenflik and numerous contributors; publishing date unstated; published by Chronicle Books, San Francisco.

The publisher of this literary work appears to have simply converted a physical book (or possibly, a compilation of magazine articles) to an electronic file and never edited it again. For, there was a “pull quote” at the beginning of every chapter that was repeated in the body text. This blogger was a bit annoyed at the redundancy. In addition, there were words broken by a hyphen in the middles of lines instead of at the ends of lines– the word-spacing had changed in the transition to ebook. There were also two or three typos that would have been corrected had even an unpaid intern proofread the book before it was distributed in ebook form.

Nevertheless, NPR (National Public Radio) has been a respectable broadcasting outlet of news and intellectual programming since 1971.Various shows, such as All Things Considered and Morning Edition have enlightened its politically liberal listeners on all major historical events through the decades, including the wars and crises of the 1970’s and thereafter.

NPR covered the Iran Hostage Crisis (which it called the “Iranian Hostage Crisis” but the hostages were American). This book says that originally, sixty-six hostages were seized, but a later chapter says, in an unexplained discrepancy, that fifty-three hostages were released.

Anyway, read the book to learn of NPR’s own funding crises and how in 2003 it received the most generous donation ever made to a cultural organization, and learn why it has been able to stay in existence all these years, notwithstanding this book’s sloppy editing.

American Radical

The Book of the Week is “American Radical, The Life and Times of I.F. Stone” by D.D. Guttenplan, published in 2009. This is the biography of a muckraking journalist, who wrote of “good, honest graft” and the “…human wreckage piling up around me.”

He was born Isadore Feinstein on Christmas Eve, 1907 in Philadelphia. He spoke Yiddish as a second language. In 1924, because his grades were below Harvard standards and there was open enrollment for local residents, “Izzy” as he was affectionately known, began attending the University of Pennsylvania. He changed his name to I.F. Stone at the tail end of his twenties.

The year 1955 saw Congressional surveillance of Stone’s weekly publication “Weekly.” Stone launched lawsuits against his oppressors, arguing that public moneys should not be used to violate his 1st Amendment rights to privacy and freedom of the press. He would have lost his lawsuits but for a curious situation.

James Eastland, chief counsel and chairman of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, included the New York Times as one of many newspapers and magazines he was surveilling. Stone had embarrassed the Times for pointing out inconsistent behavior: the newspaper’s firing of its employees who were accused of Communist leanings. Yet the Times had published articles arguing for civil rights, anti-segregation, condemning McCarthyism and immigration restrictions. The Times was indignant because it thought it was being singled out for investigation by Eastland. Eastland dropped his investigation.

Other organizations accused of harboring Communists included the Boy Scouts, Voice of America, the USO and YMCA. “The Justice Department‘s whole roster of professional informers was finally discredited…” when an ex-Communist admitted to fabricating the allegations against the organizations. In fall 1955, finally, there was vindication of Stone and other activists who were under threat of arrest or deportation or subpoena.

This blogger believes the author’s historical accounts are misleading in spots; he implies that in 1948, when the Israelis had achieved military victory over the Arabs in their war for an independent homeland, the Arabs fled. Historical accounts other than this book say that the Israelis subjected the Arabs to a forced evacuation from their homes where they had been residing for generations.

The result of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, according to the author, was cause for celebration for Stone, because a new government was installed that would impose socialism, and Stone was all for socialism. The author neglects to mention that the Soviets crushed the revolt in an orgy of bloodshed. Then the author goes on to say that Stone misread the Suez Canal Crisis.

Nevertheless, read the book to learn modern history through the eyes of a smartass reporter who called a spade a spade most of the time.