Review: Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile

Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile by Ramor Ryan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



View all my reviews

Review: The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star

The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star by Nikki Sixx
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



View all my reviews

Review: Seizure of State Power

Seizure of State Power by Michael Velli
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Supposing with voice transitioning to a tone consistent with historical events which I wish were being referenced.
thought experiment gedanken https://share.google/aimode/d4ej90TMU...

We might structure the scene around a large electronics plant which, from the standpoint of the revolutionary organization, was in the vanguard of the struggle from the earliest days of the insurrection. Let us suppose that on the first day of the general strike the assembled workers of this plant took decisions which corresponded, down to the last letter, to the organization's definition of the most urgent tasks of the day. For example, after deciding to put the plant's technology at the service of all striking workers, the assembled electronics workers formed a Workers' Council and democratically elected a Council Committee as well as a President of the Council Committee. Let us further suppose that the President of the Council Committee, unlike the militants described in earlier scenes, is not a professional organizer unfamiliar with the technical processes of the plant; on the contrary, she is a worker who had been employed in the electronics plant and had been a member of the revolutionary organization long before the popular uprising. And let us furthermore suppose that ...

... guided by its President, the electronics plant put its entire labor force and all its technology at the service of the revolutionary struggle freely distributed to the population; these devices helped coordinate on the barricades and in the streets. Two-way walkie-talkies were the struggles at different barricades, and enabled reinforcements

...workers personally participated in various struggles, and most of to come to the rescue of isolated neighborhoods. All the plant's them returned to the plant in order to design and produce two-way radio sets, 'barricade television' sets, and other electronic devices particularly suitable to the conditions of the popular insurrection. Furthermore, the Committee, and the plant's President as well, encouraged people who had not previously worked in the plant to participate directly in the production of devices...

A theory of creativity as necessary catalyst to revolutionary change.

Independent creative activity can in fact lead to the death of the old social order.²¹ A mighty burst of creative enthusiasm, 22 a revolutionary situation, is a historical possibility. Classical theory assumed that such a situation was the necessary condition for the seizure of power by a revolutionary organization.

...a mighty burst of creative enthusiasm stems from the people.

Aim

The aim of the revolution is not, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it. ...

A revolutionary situation as described by classical revolutionary theory smashes the dominant social order along with all of its bureaucrats.

Leninism?
https://share.google/0c8Xe2iS6vscmzKa6

The unique historical feat of V.I. Lenin was not to seize State power; this had been done before. Lenin's historical feat was to describe his seizure of State power with the language of a socialist movement determined to destroy the State. The application of Lenin's ideas to Lenin's practice is the foundation for modern revolutionary ideology. For aspiring leaders armed with revolutionary ideas, the revolutionary ideology provides a vision of the social power historically achieved by leaders armed with revolutionary ideas.

Sham?
https://share.google/aimode/BllDnMkwp...

...populations who struggle for independent creative activity by self-governed producers achieve a socialist society governed by a dictatorship of the proletariat led by the Workers' Party which follows a unitary ideology composed exclusively of the ideas of the party secretary-general based on the creative application of Marxism-Leninism. 170 As a result of the seizure of State power, the leader personifies all the resources, all the productive forces and all the activity of the society. Personifications of social activity animate the world. Estranged power of community-the State-is experienced as the only real community. Estranged productive power-Capital is experienced as the only real productive agent. The leader personifies the entirety of social Capital. Whatever we have, all we have built, is entirely owing to the correct leadership of comrade party secretary general. The Premier's ideas form the basis for what we call the unitary ideology espoused by the Workers' Party. Unitary ideology means there are no contending ideologies. The unitary ideology of the system of the party means the adoption, as the sole guiding principle, of the revolutionary ideas of comrade party secretary general, founder and leader of the party and great leader of the revolution. The leader founds and leads the party which is the vanguard of the working class and the general staff of the revolution. He is the supreme brain of the class and the heart of the party who puts forward the guiding ideas of the party as well as the strategy and tactics of the revolution. He is the center of the unity and solidarity of the working class and the entire revolutionary masses. There is no center except him.

View all my reviews

Review: The Aspirin Age: 1919-1941: The essential events of American Life in the chaotic years between the two World Wars

The Aspirin Age: 1919-1941: The essential events of American Life in the chaotic years between the two World Wars by Isabel Leighton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

1919

Contents

The Forgotten Men of Versailles HARRY HANSEN

1920

The Noble Experiment of Izzie and Moe HERBERT ASBURY

1921

Aimee Semple McPherson: "Sunlight in My Soul" CAREY MCWILLIAMS

1923

The Timely Death of President Harding SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

1923

Konklave in Kokomo ROBERT Coughlan

1924

Calvin Coolidge: A Study in Inertia IRVING STONE

1926

My Fights with Jack Dempsey GENE TUNNEY

1927

The Last Days of Sacco and Vanzetti PHIL STONG

1927

The Lindbergh Legends JOHN LARDNER

1929

The Crash-and What It Meant THURMAN ARNOLD

1930

The Radio Priest and His Flock WALLACE STEGNER

1931

The Mysterious Death of Starr Faithfull MORRIS MARKEY

1933

The First Hundred Days of the New Deal ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, JR.

1934

Full House: My Life with the Dionnes KEITH MUNRO

1934

The Peculiar Fate of the Morro Castle WILLIAM MCFEE

1935

Huey Long: American Dictator HODDING CARTER

1936

"The King and the Girl from Baltimore MARGARET CASE HARRIMAN

1937

An Occurrence at Republic Steel HOWARD FAST

1938

The Man on the Ledge

JOEL SAYRE

1938

The Night the Martians Came CHARLES JACKSON

1940

Wendell Willkie: A Study in Courage ROSCOE DRUMMOND

1941

Pearl Harbor Sunday: The End of an Era JONATHAN DANIELS

Madge Oberholtzer who brought down D.C. Stephenson and the Ku Klux Klan. Newsman Harold C. Feightner wrote about her saying, “Few deaths of comparatively inconspicuous people have had the far-flung effects that hers did”. Her passing marked the beginning of the end of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana; it resulted in the indictment of several political figures and the complete change in the capital cities’ administration, and it nearly wrecked a political party.

------------------------

Source: The Irish Times https://share.google/aL2vtNRCw7wR8Ey7C

It is not likely that Father Coughlin or any of his American imitators can ever again be more than public nuisances, vermin in the national woodwork. But let conditions again become as bad as they did in the deep thirties, and the vermin will reappear.

On the other hand, there will be thousands of Americans, burned by this one experience with fascism under an American and Christian label, who will be warier when the next demagogue arises. The last ironic act of Ben Levin's real-life drama was symbolic, and like the death of his son it had almost too pat a moral. When the contents of his dead son's pockets were sent him by the War Department, he donated the money not to any golden-tongued radio orator or any leader with a panacea, but to a Good Neighbor Association formed to resist the racial hatreds that the leader had brought on.

https://share.google/aimode/kxIq6DDLX...

Letters poured in. Some wanted to know, as correspondents wanted to know for the next twelve years, what a priest was doing talking on such subjects. Others cheered and wanted more. Taken together, that flood of mail meant that people would listen to anyone who sounded as if he knew answers. Father Coughlin's trial balloon had proved what people wanted to hear, and had shown him how to spread the walls of the Shrine of the Little Flower and bring into one audience thousands upon thousands of listeners. Most of those listeners were angry at the bankers; many were afraid of Communists. Though he added other scapegoats later, Father Coughlin really built his structure on those two. By a miracle of illogic, he eventually combined them.

By the end of 1930 the priest had organized his unseen listeners into the Radio League of the Little Flower, dedicated to the unraveling of the tangled economic web, and was pulling in letters in quantities that amazed WJR and may have amazed Coughlin. Other demagogues in the American tradition have been hay-wagon orators, shirt-sleeve spell-binders from park bandstands and town-hall platforms. But Father Coughlin was the first to discover how he could do the whole job by remote control, be free of hecklers, be just as sure of taking up the collection, and in addition have documentary proof by letter of what his audiences wanted.

From 1919 "The forgotten men of Versailles" by Harry Hansen

The day after the Jewish representatives made their plea for Palestine, a remarkable letter, filled with the spirit of good will, was sent by the Emir Feisal to Felix Frankfurter. In it he spoke of the deep sympathy with which the Arabs, "especially the educated among us,” looked upon the Zionist movement, and said the Arab deputation considered the Zionist proposals both "modern and proper." "We will do our best," he continued, "in so far as we are concerned, to help them through; we will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.... The Jewish movement is national and not imperialist; our movement is national and not imperialist; there is room in Syria for us both."

View all my reviews

Review: Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael B. Oren
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

From 1919 "The forgotten men of Versailles" by Harry Hansen anthologized in The Aspirin Age: 1919-1941

The day after the Jewish representatives made their plea for Palestine, a remarkable letter, filled with the spirit of good will, was sent by the Emir Feisal to Felix Frankfurter. In it he spoke of the deep sympathy with which the Arabs, "especially the educated among us,” looked upon the Zionist movement, and said the Arab deputation considered the Zionist proposals both "modern and proper." "We will do our best," he continued, "in so far as we are concerned, to help them through; we will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.... The Jewish movement is national and not imperialist; our movement is national and not imperialist; there is room in Syria for us both."

Was there a better way this could have gone?

Maybe, I don't know...

I do know that once the fighting started, but this history is a rather thrilling tale of underdog success as Israel triumphs over the distrusting and non-cooperative Arab nations. Israel captured and occupied the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria. I wasn't aware of the Jerusalem reunification under de facto Israeli rule as an outcome of this conflict.

The story told brings in roots from the Mandate era and later.

View all my reviews

Review: The Book of the Duncow

The Book of the Duncow by Walter Wangerin Jr.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



View all my reviews

Review: In Search of Forever

In Search of Forever by Rodney Matthews
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Large, nearly full page color reproductions allow close, detailed appreciation of the fantasy art. Much evokes Tolkien and there was a long working relationship with Michael Moorcock for artwork for his novels.

View all my reviews