Confused

Consumed Benjamin J. Barber W.W. Norton, 2007. 406 pgs., index, end notes.

We are inundated with advertising. This is not surprise, but it is the main theme of Barber’s book. Aside from the jeremiad about the omnipresent advertising that assaults our senses, the author doesn’t have much to say. This book is one long complaint.

To Barber, the world is run for the benefit of the producing corporations, ordinary people are helpless against the clever marketing of unnecessary products and services, and the only solution are socialist bromides.

Barber displays no understanding of economics. He fails to realize that the customer is in charge. No customers, no business. To Barber, corporations over produce and then use advertising to sell the surplus to hapless and helpless consumers. A tidy world. Was his book marketed?

It does not work this way in real life, but Barber is not a real life person. He lives is a world of pretend. Corporations must be run with a social conscience as well as with a view to profits. Really? The managers of a business have a fiduciary responsibility to the owners to make a profit with the corporate resources. Social conscience is nice, but it doesn’t pay the rent. Return on investment is not important to Barber. Jobs just magically exist. I sure hope that he returns his royalty checks.

It is true that advertising is influential, but are we really defenseless? Does targeting four year olds always (or ever) result in brand loyalty? Do we need some oversight body to protect us from someone else’s free speech? Yes, Barber avers. We are all just a bunch of mindless sheep. Thank goodness that there are wise overseers available to protect us from untoward marketing, otherwise we fools might buy the wrong thing and not learn from experience. Barber does not say how such oversight would be implemented in a free society, nor how the overseers would be overseen. Details, the bane of the idealist.

Barber does admit that his teenage daughter will be more immune to advertising that we are now seeing. She will grow up with a sense of skepticism that will do her well by allowing her to see though the duplicity of the commercial message. Too bad that we adults can’t do that. I guess that we adults are just too confused.

Will You Come?

The Shadow University Alan Kors and Harvey Silvergate, The Free Press, 1998. 415pgs., index, end notes

This book reveals the world of the modern college. This world is hidden behind the rhetoric of free speech and academic freedom. Parents and students are shielded from the ugly reality. The truth is that all that talk about freedom is a lie.

Kors and Silvergate should know. They represented many of the accused in the hearings that universities conduct when student and faculty misconduct is alleged.  The authors examine what happens to the accused when violations of speech and behavior codes are alleged.

The basis of the problem is the misguided and patronizing effort to protect and empower the groups of people that have been traditionally marginalized in our society. The result is a horrendous miscarriage of justice. The accused are plunged into a politically correct swamp of threats, bribes, intimidation, insults, and fear. The only consistency is the lack of justice.

The system is simple: you are guilty based upon your ethnic and gender status. The facts do not count. The methods used are those of the Star Chamber and Inquisition. All that is lacking are the thumb screws and the rack.

The procedures used to resolve the accusations vary with the school. The major common points are closed hearings, lack of respect for the constitutional rights of the accused, and an overwhelming desire to keep the entire matter secret. The schools are terrified of exposure. The schools are not stupid.

The schools are so adverse to bad publicity that allegations of rape are dealt with internally. Such matters must by law be reported to the police.

Publicity is the accused’s best weapon. The authors show how the schools retreat when the hypocrisy and fraud of the resolution processes are pilloried in the press. This often causes the alumni and the politicians to become involved. Faced with this opposition, the schools back down, fast. The authors relate how the Chancellor of Indiana University capitulated in his effort to discipline famous Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight. Knight made a stupid remark about rape, and the Chancellor went after him. Knight was famous for producing winning teams and national championships. The alumni and politicians rallied to Knight’s defense. The Chancellor’s job was in jeopardy. The Chancellor gave in. It was close, but a important career was saved: the Chancellor’s. And an important double standard was perpetuated.

One wonders how well Knight would have fared if he had been an obscure junior professor in the Classics Department. (Can you say Left with the trash pickup?)

This careerism is the heart of the problem. The bureaucrats at the schools do not want any trouble. All must go smoothly; there must be no trouble while the bureaucrat is responsible. If this means a double standard of justice, then that is the price the bureaucrat is willing for the accused to pay, even if it means violating the written procedures of the university grievance process.

The authors trace this to the bureaucrats’ memory of he 1960’s. The student protests of that era revealed the university administrators as impotent cowards. To avoid a recurrence of this embarrassment, and damage to their promotion potential, the administrators have given the campus ideological zealots carte blanche to turn the schools into indoctrination and reeducation camps. The politically favored groups quickly learn that if they make enough noise or even threaten to make noise, the administration surrenders to the their demands. Non-militant groups are ignored. The stories of the student and faculty victims of this doctrinaire stupidity are what make concrete such a book.

Actually it is the stories of the fighters that compose the book. Most victims simply acquiesce to the proffered punishment, usually sensitivity training,  letters of censure placed temporarily in their academic files, and community service. The dunce caps and the scarlet letters are passe. Only those with enough courage (and money) stand out. The fights are ugly, protracted, and one sided. Often the accusations against the accused, especially if they are faculty, are leaked to the press even though the university agency dealing with the matter has enjoined all to secrecy. So much for fairness or the First Amendment.

The First Amendment that is the bane of the publicly funded university. Here the school is at odds with the Constitution. The authors (Silvergate is a criminal defense lawyer) show that federal courts have consistently upheld the student’s right to free speech on the public university campus. The authors also point out that the schools have not learned from this. One school’s loss should be another school’s education. Not in the academic world.

Private schools are more immune to the strictures of the First Amendment, but crumble under the ire of the alumni and the exposure by the press. These speech code trials are a public relations catastrophe. The highest and mightiest university is no match for the front page. Most Americans can readily understand the double speak of maintaining both a speech code and free speech. The only ones who cannot are the academics.

While resistant to First Amendment challenges, the private schools are vulnerable to legal challenges on contract law grounds. All that blather the schools write in their catalogs about freedom of speech and equal justice constitutes a contract. Failure to provide what the catalog states is fraud. The schools have lost the court battles here. The authors report that many schools are now following the advice of their lawyers to tone down such statements. Too bad they did not tone down the climate of political correctness. But that would anger the militants, and that is bad for careers.

To cure the problem the authors suggest academic honesty; advertise the school as it really is: “Let them say to their public what they say to themselves: ‘This University believes  that your sons and daughters are the racist, sexist, homophobic, oppressive progeny– or the innocent victims–of a racist, sexist, homophobic, oppressive America. For $30,000 per year, we will assign them rights on an unequal and compensatory basis and undertake by coercion their moral and political enlightenment.’ Let them advertise themselves honestly and then see who comes.” (p. 371)

The Ten Percent Solution

The War Against the Weak Edwin Black, Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003. 550pgs, index, end notes.

Most Americans have not heard of Francis Galton. They do not know that he discovered fingerprints, was the distant cousin of Charles Darwin, and was  obsessed with counting and organizing everything he came across. He also invented eugenics.

What is eugenics? It is the mostly forgotten attempt to improve the human race. It sounds like a noble goal. After all, who can be against improvement? Don’t we improve animal and plant strains. Its a process has produced much good. What is wrong with that?

If all we were talking about was an improvement in cows and corn we would let Mr. Galton’s invention be forgotten. But the eugenics movement didn’t confine itself to farm husbandry. The movement spread, metastasized would be a better term, using the principles of heredity to try to engineer a super race. Galton’s ideas would be the basis of a movement that he would protest against. Galton wanted to increase the population of the upper 10% and leave the rest alone. Being an evolutionist he figured the worst of mankind would die of by itself. He did.

The goal of the movement as it was practiced in America was to eradicate the worst 10% of the human population. This would ensure improvement of the rest of the mankind. That was the dream. The reality was the nightmare.

Originating in England with Galton, the movement did not ever catch on there but instead spread to America in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the Progressive Era. The movement caught on with racial bigots. It seemed so easy to divide up the human race into subordinate racial divisions and then classify the divisions into the desirable and undesirable categories. Who gets to make the distinctions, and who decides which is the most acceptable race? The politicians influenced by the self-certified experts appointed the bureaucrats who passed judgment on the helpless. These bureaucrats deciding, often on little evidence, into which category each person should be place. In areas of great racial segregation the consequences of being in a less esteemed class could be serious. But politics influenced everything. In Virginia when the eugenics laws were being drafted, the prominent families that traced their lineage back to the Indians objected to classifying the Indians as inferior. An exception was made.

The underlying arrogance was that those who decide who is desirable always classified themselves as desirable. No big surprise. But as Black shows, the matter of race (the eugenicists had trouble deciding who was what) was not the only issue. What were considered inherited diseases were a major factor in the eugenics movement. Listed as hereditary were such diseases as drunkenness, pauperism, and prostitution.

Huge efforts, funded by the Carnegie and the Rockefeller foundations, were made to trace ancestry. Questionnaires were used to determine such characteristics as loyalty, honesty, faithfulness, and sobriety in addition to physical characteristics. All of this information was filed at the eugenics movement’s headquarters in Cold Spring Harbor, NY. The information would remain in storage for decades, ignored because it was useless.

The quackery is now evident to us, but at the time there were only a few voices raising the protest. Black lists some, such as H.L Mencken, and an the author of a pseudonymous booklet that used the principal eugenicists’ own words against them. While there was incisive criticism by the opponents, it was not enough to sway the politicians from enacting laws permitting compulsory sterilization and laws prohibiting miscegenation.

The Supreme Court would later overturn the miscegenation laws, but the sterilization laws were upheld by no less a light the Oliver Wendell Holmes who wrote for the majority (8-1) in the case of Bell vs. Buck that “three generation of imbeciles is enough.” Justice Holmes’ comments did not apply to those on the Supreme Court who voted with him.

The Buck case was a setup from the beginning. Its purpose was to get a favorable court ruling concerning forced sterilization. Carrie Buck was the daughter of a woman who was confined to a state hospital for the unfit because she said that she was a prostitute. Carrie was removed from her custody by an administrative court judge who had her place in his home so his wife could use her as free domestic help and rent her out to other families.

Carrie gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, Vivian, who was declared abnormal by a bogus expert. The expert testified that there was something wrong with the infant. Just what was never stated. That assertion was enough for the court to rule that Carrie should be sterilized. The court arranged for her court appointed lawyer, an arrant eugenicist, to appeal. The whole process was a sham. (Such is administrative law, but that is another essay.)

Once the Supreme Court ruled, thousands of men and women were forcibly sterilized, some without their even knowing that it had been done.

The most controversial aspect of eugenics was euthanasia. There were vocal advocates of euthanasia in the U.S., but there was little practice, only a few very ill babies were left alone to die, and this without legal cover. Germany would make up for the lack.

As bad as eugenics was in the U.S., it reached the malignant state in Germany. Hitler adopted it with alacrity. Eugenics would provide the science he needed to proceed with his racial program. The eugenic ideal race was Nordic, exactly what Hitler needed. No thought was given to how this Nordic standard became to be the ideal, nor was any thought given as to how the Nordic race became distinct from the rest of mankind. The irony of the Nazi eugenics is that Germany was allied with the Japanese, who were regarded as an inferior group, yet at war with the British, a group deemed to be superior.

There is the even greater irony of the war crimes trials. Here Germans were judged by Americans for eugenic practices that the Americans inspired. (The additional irony is that “crimes against humanity” is an undefined law; it was created ex post facto, illegal under the American constitution; all the eugenic acts performed by the Nazis were legal under German law; and, most amazingly, the biggest criminals of all, the Russians, were allowed to be judges. For more, see Victor’s Justice. It is well known that the war started when Germany invaded Poland. It is also well known but ignored that when Germany invade Poland from the west, Russia invaded Poland from the east. Why did England and France declare war on Germany but not Russia? For more, see Buchanan’s controversial book, Hitler, Churchill and the Unnecessary War.)

Black’s documentation is extensive. Much of his research was probably done when he was working on his previous book about IBM and the Nazis. It turns out that the IBM company sold the Germans computer equipment that enabled the Nazis to quickly sort out who had the most Aryan blood. Black says that the only records that he could not get access to were those of IBM. The company would not grant any access to him.

Black ends his book with a chapter of speculation on the future of genetics. Genetics is not the same thing as eugenics, but it is an development from the remains of the eugenics movement. With the advances in genetics what is the future? There is already widespread gender specific abortion (causing a huge imbalance in the population in China) as well as talk of designer babies. While the eugenics movement is gone from memory, it is not as dead as its victims.

Out of Gas

The Long Emergency James Kunstler Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005 307p, footnotes, no index

The world is running out of oil. What are we going to do? James Kunsler speculates about the situation that will happen as the planet’s supply of petroleum is diminishing.  While he cannot say for sure what will be the effects of global petroleum shortages, Kunsler does offer some interesting and frightening possibilities. We live in an age of cheap oil. The effects of this have been profound.

Cheap oil has lead to an life of affluence and ease for most Americans. That life will change when oil supplies begin to fail. Oil is often thought of as mostly a fuel, gasoline, diesel, and heating oil. It is also a major component in fertilizer. So is natural gas (methane). The coming crisis in fossil fuel resources will have major consequences for the production of food. Can we eat as well as we do if we don’t have the fertilizer?

Kunsler poses many good questions but also paints a picture that may be prematurely bleak. He is a neo-Malthusian. He thinks that the world’s population has been artificially sustained by the influence of cheap oil. Once the cheap oil is gone there will be catastrophe everywhere. He proposes no solution for the supposed overcrowding of the world.

He also holds to man-made global warming.  He admits that the most serious greenhouse gas is water vapor, but still thinks the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause widespread damage and upheaval. He does not mention the effect the sun has on our atmosphere.

Kunsler makes the mistake of thinking we have a free market economy.  He of course call for more government regulation. He mocks the free market system for not giving us everything by magic. He displays no knowledge of the source of inflation. He is another bigger- government-can-do-it-better-than-smaller-government advocate.

He correctly points out that the largest sources of oil lie in regions that are controlled by the most unstable governments. Those governments are oppressive. They are the ones that have long been supported by the United States government. Once these governments fall, their successors will likely cut off oil supplies to the west. Or not. Here the author fails to see that as much as we need the oil, those countries need the money. New governments need money just as much as their predecessors.

Kunsler also fails to understand that there an invisible subsidy to oil. It is all those financial and military supports we give to ensure that our allies remain in power. If this practice was withdrawn the price of oil would be at its real free market level.  If the price was high enough, there might be a real conservation movement rather than a forced, government mandated one. All of this escapes Kunsler, who has no idea how price drives conservation and innovation.

While Kunsler does make the case that our military presence in the oil producing countries is a source of anger for the local populations, he does not address the larger issue of the worldwide spread of US military bases.  He does not display any notion that the US is a global empire. He also fails to see that this empire is heading the way of all previous empires:  death by inflation through currency debasement.

He does spend time bashing Wal-Mart. Evil Wal-Mart has destroyed American small businesses and so wrecked all of community life. I guess he shops around so he can pay a higher price. He does not mention that many small, long established businesses are still doing well. Neither does he mention that business failure is common in small businesses that take their customers for granted. Don’t expect him to even consider that local governments hamper or even prevent the revitalization of their towns.  Implied in all this is his belief in top down solutions.

Kunsler does do us service by raising the issue of a post cheap oil world, but he does not give much in the way of solutions to the problems. Here he runs out of gas.

Sighted In

Target: Patton Robert Wilcox, Regnery, 2008.  444 p., end notes, index

There are a lot of famous generals in American history.  One can think of Washington, Lee, Grant, Pershing.  When one mentions George Patton, there is often a silence.  No one is quite like George S. Patton.  After reading Target: Patton I know why.

Patton was a class apart.  Outspoken, prescient, irascible,  Patton did not well tolerate the political machinations that accompany the conduct of war.  Patton did not tolerate incompetence.  Patton was very good at making enemies.

Wilcox raises some serious issues about Patton’s death.  The rumors have long swirled about how Patton died.  Wilcox suggests that what is commonly known about the general’s death is a mixture of the true and the false.

The evidence that Wilcox presents is intriguing.  But much of the evidence is that there is a lack of evidence.  The mystery is one of what does a missing report mean.  In the case of Patton’s death it is a matter of missing reports–all of them.  All of the official reports about the car crash that injured General Patton are missing.

Wilcox has sifted through a mountain of material  to come up with mostly second hand sources.  The primary players are mostly dead.  Some of the witnesses vanished without a trace.  Many of those witnesses still alive are of questionable probity.  One claims that he was a gunman that tried to assassinate Patton at the crash scene by using a special rifle that shot a piece of debris as a bullet.

The nature of any investigation into the matter is hampered by the passage of time, the confusion of the area just after the war, and the secrecy of the various governments involved.

Why kill Patton?  Patton was finished as a general.  He knew it.  He had been relieved as commanding officer of the Third Army and given an administrative post in Bavaria.  Here he created controversy by using former low level Nazis to man administrative posts in the province.  Patton’s reasoning was that they had the experience, and their former affiliation with the Nazi party was merely a matter of convenience.   Patton objected to using the Communists as Washington wanted to do because he saw Stalin as a brutal monster.  This incurred Stalin’s wrath.

It is well known that the Russians wanted to control post war Europe.  They used every means without any regard to legitimacy.  Assassinations by them were common.  Truck accidents were a common method.

Wilcox is not the first researcher to discover all the problems in investigating Patton’s death.  But he did aid future researchers by discovering that the car on display in the Patton Museum at Fort Knox, Kentucky is not the real car.  It is a 1939 model, not 1938.  He also discovered that the true name of the sergeant driving the jeep that accompanied Patton’s car is Scruce, not Spruce as everyone else writes.

The story is intriguing, but the evidence does not compel one to the conclusion that Patton was murdered.  It is odd that all the reports are missing, but this does not prove assassination.  It is not unusual that most of the witnesses are dead, even if some of them died odd deaths.  The phony car could be attributed to someone making a quick profit on the black market.  The claim that the OSS and the NKVD conspired to kill Patton is impossible to prove.  Such a conspiracy would not be written down.  In the end I think that Target: Patton is a miss.

Off Key

The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, Hugh Wilford, Harvard University Press, 2009. 342p

I am beginning to think the creation of the CIA is the worst thing to happen to America.  First I read Proudy’s The Secret Team (reviewed here).  Then I read the Invisible Government. Now I get music lessons.

The Mighty Wurlitzer details how from 1947 to 1968, the so called golden years of  American espionage, the CIA used front organizations to fund its Cold War propaganda operations.  The name comes from Frank Wisner, a major CIA officer, who made the  statement that the Agency had a system of front organizations that like a giant organ could play any propaganda tune.

It played many tunes, mostly with sour notes.  There was almost no aspect of American life that did not have a chord in this performance.  The Agency used various foundations to fund everything from labor unions to student associations.  It used Catholic priests, Africian-American dissidents, and a lot of news organizations.

Most of the people used did not know the true source of their funding.  Only the most senior officers of these front organizations were, in CIA language, “witting.”  However, a good many of the “unwitting” suspected that the immediate source of funding was not the ultimate source.  Few objected to taking the money.

The golden age ended and the Wurlitzer fell silent, sort of, when an upstart, iconoclastic publication, Ramparts, published a story about the real funding of the National Students Association.  A former head of the Association, recently disaffected by the CIA’s use of his group, told Ramparts’ editor of the matter.  The magazine conducted an investigation, found out the truth, and published it.

The CIA had found out that the story was due in the next issue, of the Agency went into defensive mode.  When there were prior exposures of Agency involvement, the Agency and the organization affected strongly denied the claims until both parties had to admit the claims were true.  Denial was not going to work this time.  By the late 1960’s the mood of the country had changed.  The Agency new it had to do something different.  It chose damage control.  The idea was to emasculate  the magazine’s story by making it old news.  The National Students Association would simply hold a press conference admitting to the taking of Agency money.  It would also say that it no longer took such funds (this is true).  But Ramparts had informants inside the Association and knew of the plan.  To counter this, the magazine took out full page newspaper ads promoting the the story.  In a sense the magazine scooped itself.

This stratagem worked very well.  There was enormous media coverage of the story.  The Agency was embarrassed.  This was the real end of the Wurlitzer.  The major news organizations had long cooperated with the Agency, running stories favorable to the Agency and suppressing stories the Agency didn’t want published.  No more.  Or so we are told.

I found Wilton’s story interesting, but his writing style is dull.  There frequent usage of the tried and true cliche.  There are modifiers that are throughout the book misplaced.

The Wurlitzer had a long recital, but played the wrong tune.  The Agency spent millions in this propaganda effort, yet the results were minimal.  Given the Agency’s support of even more nefarious projects, the Wurlitzer concerts are just a minor cacophany.

Bound as One by an Oath

Marriage as a Covenant A Study of Biblical Law and Ethics Governing Marriage, Developed from the Perspective of Malachi Gordon Paul Hugenberger, E.J. Brill, 1994.  414pp., indices, footnotes.

Is marriage a covenant?  What is a covenant?  Does it matter?  Gordon Hugenberger answers these questions and much more in his book.

My church’s adult class was studying Deuteronomy.  We got to chapter 24 when my pastor, who was leading the class, mentioned the interpretation of v. 1-4 given by his seminary professor, Gordon Hugenberger.  In his Ph.D dissertation Hugenberger advances the view that Deut. 24:1-4 should be interpreted as meaning the proscribed palingamy to the former spouse is to stop any financial gain by by the first husband.  This interpretation intrigued me.  I later asked if there was a civilian version of Hugenberger’s dissertation.  There is not, but my pastor was kind enough to lend me his copy of Hugenberer’s dissertation, complete with sticky note marking the interpretation in question.

People who know Hey, Randy know that I don’t always do things as expected.  I was not going to only read the section marked; I started at the beginning of the book and read it all, including the footnotes.  There are a lot of footnotes, this is a dissertation after all.  I left the sticky note in place.  It would later come in handy.

Hugenberer deals primarily with Mal. 2:14-16.  I think that he deals well with that passage.  I really like his interpretation of v. 15.  He relates it to Gen. 2:23, arguing correctly, I believe, that Adam’s statement is the oath/sign of his marriage covenant to Eve.   I think that the author has proven his thesis that marriage is a covenant between husband and wife.

This book is heavy reading.  It leans much upon the original languages.  This puts the general reader at a disadvantage.  However, the book is of great value in that it covers all the biblical evidence for marriage covenants and addresses many objections to this idea that have been raised by other scholars.  There are a lot of objections with which to deal.  This is dissertation after all.

While answering the objections of others is requisite for academic writers, it does add to the overall mass of the book.  If you don’t like academic writing, don’t pick up this book.  If you can tolerate academic writing you will learn a great deal.

Not all the objections raised are mere academic pettifogging.  The issue of the oath/sign is a good example of a serious objection answered by Hugenberger.  It does not take much study of biblical covenants to see that one of their characteristics is an oath.  This oath sometimes takes the form of a physical sign.  This oath/sign is always closely connected to the covenant.  It is so closely connected to the covenant that it’s violation is regarded as a violation of the covenant itself.  We see this in the new covenant instituted by Jesus.  The oath/sign is the Lord’s Supper.  What is the oath/sign of the marriage covenant?  It is Hugenberger’s opinion that the oath/sign of the marriage covenant is the sexual union.  Once this act occurs the covenant is ratified.   He cites Jacob’s marriage to Leah when he was really expecting to marry Rachel.  Once morning arrived and Jacob discovered it was Leah it was too late.  The covenant had been made and ratified.  Jacob was married.

I enjoyed the challenge of reading this book.  If I had not read it I might not have added palingamy, hypocorism, henydiadys, idolect, and about twenty other words to my vocabulary.  I think I may have been cured of my allergy to academic writing.  Is this a good thing?

But what of Dt. 24:1-4?  Alas, not so good.  It is at the very point of my interest that I find the book to be the most disappointing.   This is where the sticky note proved its worth:  it made it easy for me to find again and reread that passage.  While the interpretation offered by Hugenberger may be correct, his case is based entirely upon extra-biblical literature.  Citing the work of R. Westbrook who originated this interpretation, Hugenberger tries to make his case based upon the Code of Hammurabi where such prohibitions are in place.

I learned a lot about covenants and marriage covenants in particular by reading this book.  This justifies the effort of reading academic prose.  I recommend the book to all brave and persevering souls.  Just keep your dictionary at hand; this is a dissertation after all.

Well, It Could Be

Family of Secrets, Russ Baker, Bloomsbury Press, New York, 2009.  494pp.

It seems that the family of our 41st and 43rd presidents has been quietly busy for a long time.  Well at least for three generations.  This book is the convoluted, tangled, and byzantine story of the Bush family machinations and intrigues.  The tale begins with Prescott Bush, continues through George H.W. (Poppy) Bush and ends with George W. (W.) Bush.  Along the tortuous path odd alibis,  business deals involving assorted miscreants, international intrigues, and hints of what happens to presidents  and newsmen who resist the powers that be.

Baker reveals the oddities of the three generation of Bushes that have had such influence in American and world politics.  Baker shows that the Bushes are really different from the rest of us.  They are elites who have little in common with the hoi polloi. All three men were Yale graduates and members of its elite and secret Skull and Bones Society.  All had high government positions.  All were members of that nebulous group politically connected elites.

This is all well known.  Here the book just restates the obvious.  Yes, Yale, Skull and Bones, snobby preparatory schools and a long history of political connections. So?  The real story, which Baker does tell is the one that cannot be confirmed.  It is the tale of the connections, the deal, the plot.  This fills the book.  It is also all based on rumor and incomplete evidence.

If we remove from the book the gossip and the already known , what do we have?  Only the it could be, but we are not sure if it is.  This is not much.

The famous Air National Guard letters disparaging W’s service are an example.  Baker implies that the letters were a deliberate trap set by Bush family operatives to exact revenge on Dan Rather and to deflect criticism of W’s suspect Guard service.  Bakers adverts to the fact that the woman who delivered the copies of the letters to a known Bush hater was later found by Baker to be living in a new house in a new subdivision and to have a new car in the drive way.  The woman would not talk to Baker.  This is curious, but it is evidence of nothing.

Baker also points to the speed with which internet bloggers attacked the letters, pointing to the obvious flaws.  This is interesting but not convincing.  CBS was certainly stupid, but there is little in all this to link any Bush or one of their operatives to this.  It is more likely a case of rushing to air the story.  CBS had learned that a major newspaper also had copies of the letters and was planning to soon publish.  Not wanting to be scooped, CBS ignored the pleas of producer Mary Mapes for more time to evaluate the letters and aired the story.

The book is full of such theories about business deals, political ploys, other nefarious doings.  It is to be expected.  Politics is well known for its intrigues.  At least Baker hits both sides of the aisle: Lyndon Johnson does not come out too well.  No one comes out too well, especially the media.  Baker repeatedly points out missed opportunities by reporters to follow leads, to ask serious questions, and to go beyond the press release.   Baker acknowledges the risks in such writing.  If they took down CBS News and Dan Rather, what would they do to him?

This fear is much like Baker’s speculation that John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King could not have been killed by a “lone nut’ because that theory is too neat.  Great reading, but where is the proof?  So far, Baker is alive, well, and ignored.  This is as it should be.

Just the Way They Like It

The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, Daniel Estulin, TrineDay, 2007.  340pp. , index, endnotes.

In conspiracy theory circles the Bilderberg Group is always an object of much discussion.  Founded in 1954 by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, the group has met annually ever since.  The meetings are always held in a five star hotel in a small city of the main road.  Security is extreme.  On film I saw on YouTube said the group always meets in “five star accommodations amid ten star security.”  The meeting are private; attendance is by invitation only.  The location is revealed only a week before the meeting.  The meeting gets very little coverage in the mainstream media.

Estulin states that his purpose is to “tear the mask off the Bilderberg group.”  He succeeds somewhat, but, even as he admits, there is still much to learn.  The Bilderbergers do everything in their power to keep it that way.  Estulin points out that there is never an  official statement issued, discussions and presentations are not recorded or transcribed, and note taking by participants, while not forbidden, is discouraged.  The code of silence is honored.

Much of what Estulin writes is available from  other sources (e.g., YouTube, where there is a lot of video).  But the book does give us a summary of the discussions of the 2005, 2006, and 2007 meetings.  There are copious photographs of the attendees, some documents reproduced, and lists of the participants.

Estulin’s sources are the real issue.  It is the nature of the matter that verification is difficult.  How do we check behind Estulin?  How do we check behind anyone who writes about such groups?  There would be no conspiracy if this were all done in the open.

But this leads to the question, “Why is this done in secrecy?”  The official answer from the group is to allow the participants to speak freely without fear of attribution.  Estulin asks why can’t we know what the attendees say; they all are leader of giant corporation, principal journalists, government officials, and university administrators; people who all affect our lives.

Estulin’s book is not just limited to discussion of the Bilderberg Group.  He spends considerable time discussing the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral commission.  Both of these groups are prominent in conspiracy theory.  Here too he does not reveal anything that is not already known by those who are interested in finding out, but for those who are just beginning to look into this matter it will be helpful.

Estulin spends several chapters discussing his intrigues in tracking the conspiracy.  He relates how he was detained for questioning by airport security.  Nothing came of it when he insisted that they either charge him with a crime or let him go.  He was released.  In another chapter, he tells of getting a cryptic postcard that lead him  to a meeting with a acquaintance of poor repute.  Suspicious of the matter Estulin retains his own security force of ex KGB agents.  They arm him with a pistol, apparently not concerned with any violation of local gun laws.  The meeting never takes place. Another intrigue is his almost walking into an empty elevator shaft after meeting with a contact.

The book is filled with photographs of attendees during breaks in the sessions.  While interesting, most of the 51 pages of photograph are collages of attendees talking to each other as they stroll about the grounds between sessions.  There is even a photo of David Rockefeller eating alone.

This book will be most useful to those beginning to sort through the various groups that meet in private.  Whether or not the Bilderberg group is a cabal will be denied by the group.  Until the group is examined by the mainstream media (unlikely, since the major media owners are often in attendance) the discussion of the group will remain entirely within conspiracy theory circles.  This is just the way the Bilderbergers like it.

Science’s Most Hated Man

The Velikovsky Affair, 1966, 1978, Alfred de Grazia, ed. available on line free

There is in all the branches of science no name more despised than that of Emmanuel Velikovsky.  Velikovsky’s problem was he was not one of the establishment scientists.  Velikovsky was an outsider, a man who trespassed upon the sacred land of the specialist, an intruder in the temple of Scientism.  For these transgressions he will always be reviled, derogated, and dismissed as a crank.  His successes will never be properly acknowledged.

Velikovsky’s big heresy was to express a view of the cosmos that was not the establishment’s received wisdom of uniformitarianism.  It was Veikovsky’s view that ancient upheavals, worldwide in scope, affected the solar system and earth in particular and that these upheavals caused permanent, radical changes.

The book is a series of essays by Velikovsky supporters and one essay by Velikovsky.  While the book does tell of Velikovsky’s  many correct scientific predictions, the real story is in the revelation of the details of the scientific establishment’s treatment of Veikovsky:  it can’t be true because it was not discovered or predicted here by one of us.  It is the story of the seekers of truth rejecting truth because they are jealous of the one who found it.

The book reveals more than a little personal animosity by supposedly dispassionate scientists.  Velikovsky’s first book, Worlds in Collision, was given a hatchet job treatment by many of its establishment reviewers.  The reviews seem to have focused on denial rather than on evaluation of the evidence and reasoning.  This is not unusual; the establishment has a long history of using this tactic against mavericks.  However, more than one critic was embarrassed when they were forced to admit that they criticized the book without actually first reading it.  The old boy net in action.

This treatment backfired on the establishment.  The storm of criticism cause a great public curiosity about the book.  Sales exploded.   Velikovsky’s next book, Ages in Chaos, was ignored by the critics.  You can’t say scientists are not able to learn.

This is the real lesson of the book.  I do not have the expertise to evaluate Velikovsky’s as yet unproven claims, but it does not take a genius to see the injustice in Velilovsky’s treatment at the hands of “the impartial” scientific community.  Interlopers, beware.

It is important to realize that Velikovsky made his predictions without the aid research grants; expensive, exotic equipment; or even with any academic help.  This proved to be a real source of embarrassment to those who would later be Velikovsky’s critics.  The evidence Velikovsky marshals was available to all, but was ignored.  Velikovsky made his theories based upon ancient literary sources ignored by the professionals.  This all the more enraged the establishment .  This use of ancient sources has revealed a deep seated bigotry in the science establishment.  After all, what do those primitive people know?

Other critics dismiss Velikovsky’s success by saying that he made so many guesses that he was bound to  be right some of the time.  Those critics do not point to any Velikovsky failures.  Neither do the critics have much success with their own guessing.

Read the book and you just may love science’s most hated man.