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0307273598
| 9780307273598
| 0307273598
| 4.35
| 10,180
| 2011
| Nov 01, 2011
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it was amazing
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How was this real? When you dig down to the details about something like World War II, you at first feel like you’re going on a historical adventure wh How was this real? When you dig down to the details about something like World War II, you at first feel like you’re going on a historical adventure where you’ll learn about all the world shattering events that have shaped the way our world is. But when you come to the end of reading a book about WWII like in Inferno you just slump in amazed depression as your brain tries to grasp that the war really happened to actual people and that it wasn’t just some disimpassioned events that happened long before you were born. WWII happened relatively recently, it consumed the globe and saw around 60 million people killed while many people were tortured, raped, exploited and forgotten. The war consumed the world like nothing before or since and it’s probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to humankind on a global scale. What caused WWII? From a mechanistic standpoint, the inciting event was Hitler invading Poland and breaking the Warsaw Pact with Russia. That finally got France and Britain to declare war as was their duty in an agreement with Poland. But what was the root cause of WWII or in other words, what seeds were sown that lead to the global conflict? Again, the answer is Hitler but a more complete answer is Nazi ideology which included ultra-nationalization of the Third Reich, Aryan race supremacy and imperial rivalry and resentment that had lasted since the end of WWI. If I had to boil it down, it’s the nazification of Germany and Hitler’s ambition to dominate Eastern Europe that caused WWII to happen. Hitler was the catalyst and Italian and Japanese fascism and imperialism added gas to the fire that made the conflict global. There were two main theaters of WWII: the European and Pacific. The European conflict was mostly dominated by two authoritarian regimes who brutally fought and killed millions of people on either side: Germany and Russia. After Russia seized as much of Poland as it could, it then went and invaded Finland while Germany captured France. And then Russia took over the Baltics. Italy got involved and wanted to take over the Mediterranean, Yugoslavia, Greece, Libya, Egypt and Malta and made several efforts there that Hitler had to clean up. Japan wanted Manchuria, China and large swathes of Pacific Asia. Franco wanted Hitler to succeed but didn’t get involved because of the ravages of his own recent civil war. Franco refused German troops inside his border which kept Gibraltar neutral which turned out to be a key strategy to the Allies when they later invaded Italy and fought Germany there. Then Germany's earnest invasion into Russia with Operation Barbarossa was the largest invasion in history in terms of manpower and casualties. Despite suffering heavy losses, Russia managed to repeal Germany, both with millions dead. The two countries fought the most during this war and also perpetuated war crimes on other countries and people in their quest for territory. Japan invaded China and Manchura and fought with the English over Burma and Malaysia. After their enormous blunder of attacking Pearl Harbor, the Japanese fought the Americans all over the Pacific and suffered many losses including in Midway and Guadalcanal battle. The US final involvement in recapturing France and invading Italy and Germany probably wouldn’t have changed the outcome and defeat of Germany. Stalin was the one who triumphed over Hitler. However, the American’s ability to defeat Japan in the Pacific theater after carpet bombing the island and finally dropping two nuclear weapons for the first time finally subdued that belligerent empire. WWII is a story of Hitler’s utterly insane ambitions and delusions. His cult of personality and weaponization of nationalism allowed him to harness the power of his country. And then he somehow thought he’d be able to just conquer everything, stretching his forces and trying to force cultural change on the people he occupied. His and Japan’s ambitions were doomed before they ever began. The utter pointlessness and stupidity along with ethnic cleansing of the Jews is just too overwhelming to even comprehend. It’s hard to imagine that these events occurred but they really did and the world lives in its aftermath where America was able to mold the world in its economic and anti-communist vision which then forged the next global conflict. Russia may have defeated Hitler, but the US won the war. ...more |
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140673957X
| 9781406739572
| 140673957X
| 4.19
| 449
| 1923
| Mar 15, 2007
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it was amazing
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Emma Goldman: the pinnacle critical thinker. Welcome weary traveler who has come across my review for My Further Disillusionment with Russia. Like you, Emma Goldman: the pinnacle critical thinker. Welcome weary traveler who has come across my review for My Further Disillusionment with Russia. Like you, I have read plenty of communist sympathetic texts as well as western society critiques. Like you, I enjoy the Marxist critiques of capitalism and generally endorse social democratic policy. Like you, I’m horrified by the history of the Soviet communist regime. Like you, my mind has been utterly blown away when I’m gaslighted by modern day communists when I criticize Soviet Russia and have been belittled into believing that I’m simply an indoctrinated western propagandist. Well, my friend, this book is for you. Is there anyone more apt to critique and provide an unbiased opinion of Soviet Russia and the Bolshevik revolution than a lefty leftist anarchist who was imprisoned and then deported from the US for being too radical left who visited Russia in 1921? In this book, there is no “western revisionist history”. Anarchist Emma Goldman simply gives her unadulterated opinion of the Bolshevik movement and what does she find? It was bad. Very bad. Goldman was hoping for an anarchist promised land when she came to Russia but she only found state-inflicted famines, political prisoners, rationing of food, tiered salary from the state, arrest and writers with dissenting opinions, state capitalism and an overall oppressive authoritarian regime. Hmm, sounds like everything else I’ve read about the USSR that is allegedly just western propaganda. All the bolshevik revolution did was a scene-change from the Romanovs sitting on a throne to Lenin sitting on that throne. Lenin was a politician, contorting his rhetoric and actions to stay in power just like any other politician before and after. The bolshevik’s bastardized the concept of revolution. Goldman’s observations in the Afterword are simply brilliant. She is a fiercely intelligent thinker (she was also kind of a terrorist who plotted the assassination of Henry Clay Frick, so she’s no paragon of virtue). Goldman argues that the peasant class revolution that happened in Russia actually subverted Marxist ideas. Marx argued that a society needed a sufficient degree of industrialization to then move to a socialist revolution. Goldman states that the largely agrarian people of Russia didn’t even know about Marx theory and went ahead and started a revolution anyway, totally upending that theory. It was then the bolsheviks and the Lenin cadre that co-opted the movement and rebranded their own authoritarianism. Reading this book was an exercise in confirmation bias for me and it honestly felt very good. I won’t let another modern day communist lead me to believe that the Soviets were “building communism” and how wonderful they were because they gave free education and healthcare to people. I got news for you: other modern “western” societies have done that except without the overt authoritarianism and overt civil rights violations. I’m sick and tired of the Soviet apologetics. It’s unfathomable insulting to the victims of that terrible, terrible, regime. ...more |
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0156421178
| 9780156421171
| 0156421178
| 4.09
| 63,642
| Apr 25, 1938
| Oct 22, 1980
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it was amazing
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I just reread 1984 and wanted a deeper look into George Orwell as a person so I read Homage to Catalonia with great interest and this book didn’t disa
I just reread 1984 and wanted a deeper look into George Orwell as a person so I read Homage to Catalonia with great interest and this book didn’t disappoint. We get his first hand account of his time fighting with the anarchist militia, the POUM, and against the fascist Franco trying to usurp the Republican Spanish government. This is readable and highly pertinent to what was going on in Spain at the time. Orwell and his wife spent their time in Barcelona where they experienced a whiff of anarchist society: no class distinction, no tipping, no money ect. Of course this only lasted a few months as the communist party who had major influence there didn’t like workers controlling anything very much. Orwell spent a lot of time being very bored and very uncomfortable waiting around for action. He threw some grenades and fired some shots at the fascists in the south but he didn't see much action for quite a while. We get much of his observations about the Spaniards and the ridiculous political divisions among the Republicans. Orwell was there to fight fascism—that’s all he really cared about. The huge alphabet soup of all the different leftist parties was an enormous distraction and the infighting was tremendously counterproductive. Orwell didn’t care what party he belonged to, he just happened to be fighting with the POUM anarchist military militia and was aloof and disgusted by the political divisions. The man hated Franco and Hitler and wanted to stop them but there was an enormous sense of futility and inevitability in his account. He, quite prescient, knew that some form of fascism would take over in Spain, either from the communists who controlled much of the Republicans or from Franco but he figured Franco was by far the worse option. I love his sentimentality he has toward the Spanish people and believes that a milder form of fascism would come than in Germany simply because of the sensibilities of the Spanish. The really aggravating thing in these pages are the inaccurate reporting, lies and party propaganda that happened around the Spanish Civil War. It’s amazing to hear what he says newspapers are saying as opposed to his first hand account. He was in Barcelona when the leftist infighting began and the communist party attempted to purge and criminalize the anarchist POUM and cast the party as fascist spies or trotskyists. None of it was true but the purge happened nonetheless. The truth was, the communist party didn’t want workers and anarchism happening as much as Franco didn’t and so they wiped them from the political landscape. The communist party and the soviets were clearly as authoritarian and totalitarian as any other form of fascism. That fact is apparent in this memoir as well as in Orwell’s 1984. One cannot help to think the over propaganda and believing lies likely informed his work in 1984. Orwell did see action, was shot in the neck and lost the use of his hand and voice for a bit. He was lucky and recovered and it’s so amazing hearing everything he’s been through. You will get to know Orwell and his wonderful wife in this book and come to understand the humanity and decency behind simply wanting the best thing for the most people. This memoir will remind you that politics is garbage and that it doesn’t change. Everything in this book and what happened in Spain is relevant today. ...more |
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0231156820
| 9780231156820
| 0231156820
| 4.04
| 515
| Jul 08, 2011
| Aug 09, 2011
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it was amazing
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Nonviolent resistance works better than violent resistance. This is a book written with a specific goal: to convince the reader that non-violent resist Nonviolent resistance works better than violent resistance. This is a book written with a specific goal: to convince the reader that non-violent resistance is superior to violent resistance. The authors delicately and succinctly lay out their argument in a scholarly way while providing their methodology. They looked at both violent and non-violent resistance movements all over the world from 1900 to 2006 and found clear statistical evidence that non-violent resistance is more successful at regime change than violent resistance. One of the main advantages and characteristics of a non-violent movement is a low barrier for mass public participation. Violent resistance almost always relies on a smaller group of people, fragile networks, and unreliable external assistance. The low barrier of non-violent resistance opens the doors for a larger cohort of the public across racial, class and ideological lines that provides the impetus for the movement and insidiously chips away at the power and influence of the regime who is in control. It is way, way easier for a regime to crack down on a violent group who uses terrorism and/or guerrilla warfare in their resistance. The regime is provided with the social and political justification and ammunition to apply force and violence to destroy the violent opposition groups. Non-violent resistance is more like trying to nail Jello to the wall because it is more broadly spread among the populace and instills self-reflection in the regime members and often ultimate defection and collapse of the regime. It is worth stating the violent resistance can and has succeeded in regime change but they most certainly succeed at much lower rates than non-violent movements, the authors provide ample evidence of this. Additionally, once a violent movement succeeds, they are way more likely to have much harsher civil rights abuses and oppressive instruments in place that are just as bad as the outgoing regime or even worse. Many examples of this abound. The authors provide numerous case studies including the fall of the Sha in the Iranian revolution in the 1970s, the fall of Marcos in the Philippines, the Palestinian Intifadas and others. What many of these examples have in common is mass non-cooperation with the state, boycotts, strikes and protests.The authors are very careful with how they present these examples. They fully recognize that just because a nonviolent movement helped displace an authoritarian regime, it doesn’t mean the good times roll. This is especially true in the post-Sha theocratic rule in Iran and the de facto apartheid occuring in Israel after the well organized and transiently effective Intifadas. But here is what the authors argue quite effectively in my opinion with robust evidence: nonviolent campaigns are not only more likely to succeed in regime change but they more often have a liberal democracy afterwards and less likely to relapse into civil war. Violent coups more likely have rebranded authoritarian rule and more often have subsequent civil wars. Many argue that non-violent resistance and violent resistance have a symbiotic relationship and that any success of a non-violent resistance is also owed to violence, but the authors did not find this to be true. Most of the evidence is that violent resistance actually has the opposite effect: the non-violent movements get lumped into the violent movement and together they are treated with justified violence from the regime. I'm deeply troubled right now in 2024 about the extremism happening on both sides of the political spectrum. I lean left and so the threat from right wing extremism is very clear to me. There is a clear global neo fascist movement that is taking over the political world. That is unassailable. However, it would be very unwise to assume that there is not a loud minority of leftists that also seeks change and believe that violence is not only the only means of achieving change but is in fact virtuous.The marxist vanguard revolution ideology is very troubling to me and is a tactic that I condemn. We have abundant historical evidence that violent vanguardism has resulted in rebranded authoritarianism and human rights violations perhaps to the same degree as right wing fascist neoliberal and neocolonialism. Violent extremism, regardless of its ideology, is immoral, unethical, ineffective and should be widely condemned. ...more |
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B000FCK206
| 4.06
| 76,040
| Mar 16, 2004
| Jul 2018
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it was amazing
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The man that changed the world. Imagine a woman is kidnapped from her husband by a nomadic tribe, forced into that tribe and then impregnated. The wome The man that changed the world. Imagine a woman is kidnapped from her husband by a nomadic tribe, forced into that tribe and then impregnated. The women, and her five children are then rejected by her own captors and have no home and dwells by a river to fend for themselves which is likely a death sentence. Imagine one of those children a few decades later unites millions of his own people under one banner, conquers a land mass from China, to Hungary and to Baghdad and institutes the largest empire that has ever existed in history besides the British Empire. That is Genghis Khan. It’s not that he led a revolution of the aristocracy (like the American or French revolution). He was literally some poor bastard kid that lived by a river. It’s the most incredible real-life origin story I think I’ve ever known. Before reading this book, my impression of the Mongols was the following: violent, horde, rapist, conqueror ect. After the 1600s there was enormous “mongoloid” scapegoating by the Soviets, racists, pseudoscientists, phrenologists doctors and all sort of intelligentsia which was fabricated to create the right narrative to bring asiatic people more easily under western colonial rule. My skewed perspective of the Mongols before reading this book was directly affected by that anti-asian racist image that was carefully cultivated long before I was born. And that’s what makes this book so incredible. All that racist crap goes out the window when you discover what an incredible person Genhis Khan was and how amazing his empire was. Of course, no conqueror is actually “good” from a traditional moral perspective. All the world conquerors throughout history were murderers, rapists and power hungry bad people. Khan is not really an exception: he literally murdered his step brother as a young man and did lots of other bad stuff to people. But here’s what sets Genghis Khan apart: not only is his origin story incredible but he very clearly united and liberated his own people while actually creating a relatively egalitarian empire with religious tolerance that sought to integrate other cultures and not abolish them. That is next level stuff. Can you say the same about any recent Western conquerors or colonialism? Of course not. When you compare Genghis Khan to other empires, he is clearly much more relatively peaceful. Genghis Khan took a bunch of tribes that were constantly at war who performed routine kidnapping of women, united them and outlawed the vengeful practices that were destroying his people. He totally destroyed the aristocracy and gained total control and made himself beholden to his own laws. He initially controlled an area about the size of western Europse and about 1 million people. He got rid of the inherited lineage and privilege and opened leadership up to anyone and regardless of their backgrounds. He created a culture of absolute religious tolerance full of Christians, Muslims, Daoists, Buddhists and whoever else. He created taxes but also made exceptions for the poor and professionals. He created the decimal system for his troops and made one of the most dynamic and powerful armies in the world that used scare tactics and surprise rather than traditional siege or wars of attrition. The success of his war tactics spread like a virus and completely upended warfare. His son continued much of the same tradition but ruled from a capital city rather than from horseback. He created paper money along with all the monetary policy that goes along with it. He created a universal alphabet for his enormous bureaucracy to communicate over large distances and many cultures. Particularly in China, the Mongols instituted lots of what would be considered social democratic policy including education for all. They developed tons of science and astronomy as well as census taking. They were extremely pragmatic way more than they were idealistic, adopting mathematical and engineering solutions from all the cultures they conquered and then integrated into the empire. The Mongol empire very much influenced Western culture and has a lasting impact today.. One of the issues is that the success of the Mongol empire depended on continued conquest. They advanced through Kiev, Poland, Georgia, Turkey, Hungary, Egypt and Bahgadad and spread all through China as Genhis’ heirs descended into monarchical aristocracy which ultimately led to the eventual demise of the empire as well as collapse of their economy and bad inflation. There was tons of political infighting and inheritance disputes. There was a steady decline over four centuries. The later vilification of Genghis Khan by European colonists has become part of anti-Mogul and anti-asian propaganda that you still see today. ...more |
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Kindle Edition
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0547974531
| 9780547974538
| B011H55NQC
| 4.21
| 3,439
| Mar 29, 2016
| Mar 29, 2016
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it was amazing
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The terrible war before the terrible war. I should probably stop reading so much Adam Hochschild because it’s generally a bad idea to get so much of yo The terrible war before the terrible war. I should probably stop reading so much Adam Hochschild because it’s generally a bad idea to get so much of your history from one brain but I must say every book I read by him blows me away and that was no exception reading about the Spanish Civil War in Spain in Our Hearts. Hochschild has an absolute gift with engaging the reader with human stories while also giving an accurate and fairly balanced accounting of historical events. I lived in Spain for two years as a young man and yet during my time there, I knew little and understood even less about the Spanish Civil War and its consequences. Franco was always spoken of with hushed and hurried words. It was as if the 30 plus year rule of a fascist dictator over the country never happened. This book will tell you the story of sympathetic Americans who, on their own accord, went to Spain to fight a fascist movement and the tragedy that happened while the Western world chose who would be the victor by their inaction. This war was fought between the leftist Spanish Republicans and the Nationalist who were controlled by Francisco Franco. The Republicans were a Leftist coalition of communists, socialists, separatists and straight up anarchists. But this war was not only a right wing fascist attempt at a coup but also an anarchist revolution, much different from the Bolsheviks. During this Civil War, an anarchist revolution of probably the most historical significance occurred in Barcelona, Valencia and Catalonia. There were regions during this time that literally abolished money and implemented worker owned production. The Republicans also were joined by Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell who fought for their cause. Orwell was even shot in the neck and almost died. Much of their work, including Orwell’s 1984, was influenced by their time in Spain. To quote Orwell: "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism." But the cards were stacked against the Republicans. The other fascists during this time, Mussolini and Hitler, supported Franco. Hitler saw Spain as a fertile war experimenting for when he would take over eastern Europe and wage a war against France and the UK. Right from the get go, Franco was well supplied with arms and supplies from Italy and Russia. The only state supporter of the Republicans was Stalin who only gave them a bunch of old, crappy guns. Aside from the Russians, the Republicans were joined by a bunch of international brigades, around 35,000 people, that joined because they sincerely believed in their leftist cause and loathed fascism. There were war crimes and atrocities on both sides. The Republicans cannibalized themselves with tons of infighting amongst the communist party and anarchists (classic Leftists). Things got bad with the leftist factions in Barcelona in May 1937 when they fought one another, in a civil war within a civil war, after the Communist Party and its Catalan branch tried to take over an anarchist-controlled exchange. The Republicans had tons of gold left over from selling stuff during WWI but… they had no one to buy from except Russia. So where was the US during this? Chilling. FDR and the US had an embargo on selling arms to any regime at war or something like that. So the US officially sat things out, putting up their feet to see how the whole fascist coup would pan out. But you know who was involved? Texaco. That’s correct, Texaco gave all the gasoline to Franco that he needed on credit. Oh, also, Franco’s army had around 12,000 trucks from GM and Ford. So officially, the US wasn’t involved, but unofficially the US-own corporations absolutely ensured Franco’s victory. So not only did the US NOT pursue a proxy war against Hitler and Mussolini, the US decided knowingly to de facto SUPPORT these fascist movements. One cannot help but speculate about if the US had actually aided the Republicans over Franco. What would the impact have been for WWII? Perhaps Hitler wouldn't have felt so emboldened after Franco’s victory and also having practiced his own war games over the innocent civilians of Spain. Of course I’m speculating but it’s reasonable to assume that allowing fascist regimes to run roughshod over the Spanish population certainly didn’t DETER them from further ambitions. This was an astounding read. Whether you’re familiar with the Spanish Civil War or not, this will impact you tremendously. ...more |
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0618758283
| 9780618758289
| 0618758283
| 4.14
| 8,942
| Apr 11, 2011
| May 03, 2011
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it was amazing
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The War to Start All Stupid Wars. This is my third Hochschild read and I must say, this guy is absolutely amazing. He has a way of drawing into the his The War to Start All Stupid Wars. This is my third Hochschild read and I must say, this guy is absolutely amazing. He has a way of drawing into the historical narrative in a way I find engaging, balanced and disimpassioned. To End All Wars is about World War 1 and it is from the perspective of Britain and contains a host of players there, and around the world. If you’re looking for a book that explains the political conditions before the war as well as the causes and utter stupidity of the war, then this is your book. In this telling, we start with a lot of the drop of the British Empire leading up to WWI, as far back as the 1880s. This backdrop is important because it sets the stage for the cavalry and artillery war that would play out on the European western front, but also many of the same leaders were involved with the British empire during this time. This book starts out with the South Africa Boer War when a bunch of gold was discovered there and the British empire was like nuh-uh that’s ours now. The Boers were descendants of Dutch, German and French settlers and they actually wanted to keep control of the gold mines there and so they had war and the British won but not of course without Alfred Milner erecting a couple of concentration camps where around 30,000 women and children died. The fact that it was two nations of white people fighting for South African resources and that the actual darker skin natives of the land had no say whatsoever is so laughably obvious it's barely worth repeating here. But this was all preamble with key figures such as Milner but also Field Marshals John French and Douglas Haig who would be instrumental in the dumbest and one of the most deadly wars of all time. But, here we also get an introduction to tons of British leftist dissent and activism. Charlotte Despard (John French’s sister!) who was an anglo-Irish suffragist, Emeline Pankhurst and her daughters Sylvia and Christabel (also women activists) along with Bertrand Russel and Roger Casement. You see this book is also a huge tale about the anti-war and militant Leftist activism that was alive and well during this time. So Milner, Haig and French all returned home after their South African slaughter among tons of speculation that there would be Europe war with Germany. WWI didn’t just spring from zeus’ head after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. No. Many people believed it was already inevitable. And why? Freaking imperialism rivalry. You see, WWI was nothing more than Germany and Austria-Hungary empire being envious of the pillaging of their rivals and they had enough of that and so went to war. That’s kind of it. Ferdinand assassination was most definitely the spark that lit the already well laid dynamite. Germany and Austria-Hungary were allies. As soon as a Serb extremist killed Ferdinand, Wilhelm was like “sweet, we have our excuse. Go forth my Ottoman brethren, invade Serbia”, which they did when they fired the first shot of WWI in Belgrad. So then Germany was like “sweet, we’ll just walk through neutral Belgium and go take France.” Which they did. Which then forced Britain's hand. And thus started the four year hellscape of trench warfare and using the underclass as artillery fodder in the dumbest and most banal war I think I’ve ever read about. The people running the show were stupid. What I mean is, they were thinking in terms of traditional gentleman’s war when suddenly there was advanced artillery that just mowed down the poor men forced to march out into it. This just became a barbed wire trench war very, very quickly which then degenerated into chlorine and mustard gas warfare along with flamethrowers and zeppelin bombing of civilians on both sides. An idiotic turf war of egos between British Field Marshals Haig and French got thousands and thousands of men pointlessly mowed down by gunfire. The war then sparked ethnic factions elsewhere in not only Serbia but in Turkey where something like 1 million Armenians were genocided. The conscientious objection in Britain at this time was enormous. Tons of socialist and anarchist counter sentiments with the Pankhursts and Despand as well as Bertrand Russel and many others. Opposite them you have Kipling who was nothing more or less than a loquacious war and imperial propagandist. Tons of protestors and writers were imprisoned, including Bertrand Russel. Same thing was happening in the US with Debs and others. The Christmas Truce really freaked out the British and German leaders because if soldiers just decided to not fight, then that was that. It’s kind of what happened in Russia at this same time when Lenin and his Bolsheviks (at the encouragement of the Kaiser) seized power at the Kremlin. Of course during the first Bolshevik provisional government election, the party suspected they weren’t getting enough votes so they shut down the elections for about seventy years. Honestly the only good thing that happened during this time is Britain finally decided women should probably vote or the militant movements would do something similar to the Bolsheviks. Of course only women with property who were only 30 years old could vote, but hey I guess when everything is terrible, this looked like a decent gain. I walk away from this amazing book quite depressed. The whole thing was such a dumpster fire disaster that it’s hard to not lose faith in humans. Anyway, if you would like to continue the self-flagellation in learning this part of history, read his other WWI book with American perspective. And spoiler alert: the Americans were just as bad. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ...more |
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Mar 21, 2024
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Mar 14, 2024
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Hardcover
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1783965371
| 9781783965373
| 1783965371
| 4.20
| 19,198
| Apr 22, 2021
| Apr 22, 2021
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really liked it
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A slice of current geopolitics. I’m a fan of Tim Marshall. He has a cutting, dry wit about the world and seems to be quite knowledgeable about the curr A slice of current geopolitics. I’m a fan of Tim Marshall. He has a cutting, dry wit about the world and seems to be quite knowledgeable about the current stage of geopolitics. This book focuses on Australia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, The Sahel region of Africa, Ethiopia, the UK, Spain and a few others. Very notably absent are the US, China, all of Asia, India and Russia. You can’t have a complete discussion about world politics without discussing the US and China. Although they are very much mentioned tangentially. At any rate, this is a good book to familiarize yourself with a nice summary of the history of each country. Australia seems to be torn between its dependency on energy from other countries, trading with China but also dealing with its hostility while also needing the protection of the US. I really enjoyed the discussion about Ethiopia. I had no idea it is one of the few countries to be not technically colonized and has been growing with such an enormous host of people to govern within its borders. I loved the discussion and history of Spain in particular. This overall was not a bad book but shouldn’t be your only geopolitical read. ...more |
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1783963468
| 9781783963461
| 1783963468
| 4.05
| 4,284
| Aug 10, 2017
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it was amazing
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Vacationing in Nazi Germany. What did the world think of the new regime that had legally taken hold of the Weimar Republic in the 1930s? Were they roun Vacationing in Nazi Germany. What did the world think of the new regime that had legally taken hold of the Weimar Republic in the 1930s? Were they roundly condemned for their antisemitism or ultranationalism? What would YOU have thought of this regime change that occurred in one of the world’s most prestigious scientific and cultural centers? This book opens up the letters, correspondence and journal entries of visitors to the Third Reich during the intervening time between the formal fall of the Weimar Republic and World War II and I will tell you this: people weren’t too bent out of shape over the Nazis. Despite the fallout of WWI, Germany was still highly revered and a choice vacationing spot for Europeans and Americans. The Nazi uprising was not seen as a terrifying totalitarian state, to most people it was either a curious oddity or signs of a new age in Germany. What’s a little harmless antisemitism when the streets are clean, the girls are pretty and the towns are lovely? This was the prevailing sentiment to Nazi Germany during this time. Either that, or ardent foreign supporters of the aims of the Nazis. The Olympic games were held in Nazi Germany where the party strived to hide the uglier side of their antisemitism and presented an organized and polite people to the world. Hitler and the Nazi party, in fact, seeked the approval of England and America and were constantly courting their people through carefully cultivated tourism. WEB Du Bois visited Nazi Germany in 1936 and actually expressed words of admiration for what the Nazi party had done with the economy, himself unable to distinguish national socialism from communism. However, Du Bois could clearly see the horrific treatment of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany. People during this time were very confused about what the Nazi party even stood for. The Nazis were ardently anti-communist and anti-bolshevik yet they used national socialism as a means to collectivize national wealth and resources. How was national socialism different from the red communism to which the Nazis were so vehemently opposed? People were confused then just as they are confused today. And that’s why this is such an important book to read today. Sure the Nazis used a form of state socialism to protect and favor the ethnic in-group, this gives ample ammunition to call the “National Socialists” a left wing movement. However, when you look at the underlying ideology of the Nazi party, it was very clearly extreme conservatism: anti-homosexual, anti-intellectual, book burnings, white supremacy, bismarckian, racial segregation, anti-urban and anti-Marxist. It was a rainbow coalition of the rural and racially discontent who scapegoated the Jews, the communists, the Marxists and Leftists and stoked the very real grievances of the Treaty of Versailles and massive poverty, unemployment, inflation and hunger of the German people. The Nazi party was a contortionist party, molding its rhetoric to fit its audience to gain power. People are confused then about what the Nazi party stood for, then and now. This book helps to see the reality: it's complicated. ...more |
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1783964456
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| 3.87
| 2,939
| 2003
| Jun 06, 2019
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it was amazing
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Amazing first hand account of the Kosovo War. I was looking to learn a little more about the fall of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. I'm motivated because eth Amazing first hand account of the Kosovo War. I was looking to learn a little more about the fall of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. I'm motivated because ethnic factionalization was a very large factor in the breakup of Yugoslavia and it's a very pertinent threat today in 2024. So while browsing some books I found by Tim Marshall and this book was fantastic for so many reasons. Marshall has incredible dry wit which paradoxically made this first hand narration of the Kosovo War hilarious at times. He is a very engaging storyteller and he gives a very human and realistic of not only the war in Kosovo but the breakup of Yugoslavia. Marshall shares his time in Kosovo with the KLA and the Serbs vying for control of the region. Marshall was very much there during the war and camped with many civilians, soldiers and reporters. You will get a his on the ground experience as the West had enough of Serbia President Dictator Milosevic and finally bombed Serbia via the UN. Marshall was there during the bombings and him pairing the mundane life of going to a restaurant while bombs are dropped on Belgrad was truly bizarre, surreal and also weirdly hilarious. Marshall then covers the end of Milosevic with a coup from the civilians and how his regime just kind of gave up and did nothing while the parliament, the prior seat of Yugoslavia, was breached and seized. I find this truly stunning history and very telling about the fracturing that can happen a nation when fascist, nationalistic and racist populists get a bullhorn. This book was overall phenomenal. ...more |
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0593137787
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| 4.24
| 5,078
| Jan 06, 2022
| Jan 11, 2022
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it was amazing
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Ethnic factionalization causes civil wars. This is an academic look of a political scientist reviewing the civil wars of Syria, Yugoslavia, Myanmar, Ph Ethnic factionalization causes civil wars. This is an academic look of a political scientist reviewing the civil wars of Syria, Yugoslavia, Myanmar, Philippines, Rwanda and other conflicts in Ireland, South Africa and other countries. The author reviews the factors that cause civil war and then applies them to what is going on in the United States. I found this to be a balanced, measured approach to a very sensitive and volatile topic. Despite what you may think, it is not wealth concentration, poverty and political polarization that causes civil war. Many people have lived for centuries or decades under extreme poverty and oppression without a civil war breaking out. You can have stability and mass inequity, I mean look at large swathes of human history and you find these conditions. Here are the conditions for civil war: when a nation is moving between autocracy and a representative/parliamentary democracy—a political state called anocracy. And here’s the thing, it doesn’t matter which way you’re going—either toward autocracy or toward democracy—the power shifts create the conditions. An anocracy is a semi-democratic government that has been loosely defined as part of a democracy but has a non dynamic regime in place that mixes features from both democracies and autocracies. Many modern governments are anocracies including the United States. So, the anocratic state sets the stage and the spark that leads to civil war is ethnic factionalization. That’s it, those are the ingredients. And then when you take the ingredients of an autocracy and ethnic factionalization an bake it in an oven of social media, very bad things can happen. When the dominant ethnic group that has enjoyed long term rights and privileges termed the “Sons of Soil” feel their power threatened, this leads to ethnic factionalization. Once racial resentment rises with demographic shifts either from changing fertility rates or immigration, an “ethnic entrepreneur” (basically a nativist populist) can come along with all their dog whistles and dehumanization of the underclass and this will unite the dominant racial group that fears their cultural and economic power loosening. It is when the dominant group becomes disillusioned with the government and feels the trajectory of their power slipping when they factionalize. When this happens, the moderate bulk of the populace then falls into the black hole of extremism and they start supporting populist and nativist leaders. Of course, when actually oppressed groups feel their own influence and power slipping with failed protests and no government concessions, extremism and violence can flow from that as well as in Syria. Modern day civil wars are not fought like traditional civil wars. Central governments are way too powerful for militias and paramilitary groups to fight on a battlefield. As seen in Myanmar and many other countries, social media is used to normalize the rhetoric and radicalize prior moderates and then decentralized paramilitary groups execute guerrilla tactics and terrorism. Disinformation is promulgated to obscure who is responsible for the violence and the intent is to weaken trust in the current government and force the populace to pick a side, thus spreading the factionalization to everyone. Needless to say, the United States has many red flags. But civil wars are not inevitable. As with SouthAfrica, when leaders try to reconcile rather than seek vengeance or power, the populace can follow. Re-growing trust in the current government is key and this can be accomplished with robust social democratic policies that uplift people across race and class lines. The grievances of the factions must be remedied (without concession to the actual people executing violence). Increasing state services and social programs help prevent moderate people from being radicalized. Streamlining immigration and stopping illegal immigration is another great way to stop the flames of ethnic factionalization. On top of that, social media needs better regulation. The bullhorn of hateful, racist, populist demagogues needs to be highly censored. Yes, censored. Obviously that brings up other problems but social media companies are private companies that can and should make decisions of who to censor and who to not. This has nothing to do with the first amendment which doesn’t provide private protection for free speech. Anyway, a great and timely book. Read it. ...more |
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0593652967
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| 4.41
| 8,997
| Sep 26, 2023
| Sep 26, 2023
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it was amazing
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The dance between progressivism, conservatism and the threat of authoritarianism. I've read at least a dozen of these post-mortem Trump critiques and t The dance between progressivism, conservatism and the threat of authoritarianism. I've read at least a dozen of these post-mortem Trump critiques and this one is definitely very good. Not only does Richardson go over the ins and outs of the rise and threats of Trumpism but she gives a welcomed and succinct review of American history and its conflicts between progressivism and conservatism. This is not a vital read unless you haven't read a book like this. ...more |
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1451654669
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| 4.13
| 5,971
| Nov 05, 2013
| Nov 05, 2013
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liked it
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Kind of a fractured narrative about Red Cloud that I found tedious and kind of boring. I had a hard time staying engaged and felt like I learned more
Kind of a fractured narrative about Red Cloud that I found tedious and kind of boring. I had a hard time staying engaged and felt like I learned more from just reading Wikipedia entries.
...more
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Feb 15, 2024
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Feb 15, 2024
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0393357422
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| 0393357422
| 4.40
| 11,684
| Sep 18, 2018
| Oct 01, 2019
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it was amazing
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The American Constitution means whatever you want it to mean. This is a sweeping and ambitious history book where the author attempts to give the reade The American Constitution means whatever you want it to mean. This is a sweeping and ambitious history book where the author attempts to give the reader the entire history of the US from inception to 2016. Does she pull it off? Yes. Will a book like this always feel lacking in detail? Yes. So you just need to know what you’re going into before you dive into this book. This is perfect for someone who wants a general gestalt of American history or someone who knows very little. Obviously, if you’re interested in certain eras, then don’t read this because as soon as you start getting interested in a certain period, the book is off and running again to the next quarter century. This book spends a decent amount of time on colonization, the Revolutionary War, early America through Industrialization. A good enough time is spent on the Civil War through the Reconstruction Era and then Turn of the Century politics and tensions. Of course, not enough time is spent on WWI and WWII. There was a welcomed stop in the 1960s and the political divisions wrought during that time and then I enjoyed the discussion of the 1980s going forward. She spent some good time talking about the disruption of the internet and politicized news that fractured American politics from the 1990s forward. Briefly, we get the coming of Donald Trump at the end. One of my biggest takeaways from this book is the observation that the Constitution means whatever someone wants it to mean. The Constitution, and America, were born and breed of conflict and have remained there to this day. There has never been normalcy, egalitarianism, peace or anything close to an actual unified nation state. The country was literally born from rebellion despite deep divisions that have never healed. The Framers grappled with slavery and white supremacy when the Constitution was drafted and never resolved anything and left it to the future to figure out. Well, we still never really figured all that out and those seeds of division have grown into a rebranding of the same issues. As far as I’m concerned, making an appeal to the Constitution is basically a logical fallacy at this point. Someone can construe that document literally any way they want. And Constitutional Originalists? Get outta here. You're going to appeal to the preserved argument of literal slavers to justify not adapting to the exigencies of a modern society? Cut that crap out. At any rate, this was good and is more of an American political history than anything else. ...more |
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019516895X
| 9780195168952
| 019516895X
| 4.39
| 31,947
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| Dec 11, 2003
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it was amazing
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America has always been insane. I’m no Civil War buff and wanted to learn more specifically about the politics, culture and war during that time so I p America has always been insane. I’m no Civil War buff and wanted to learn more specifically about the politics, culture and war during that time so I picked up Battle Cry of Freedom hoping it would do the trick and it was exactly what I was looking for. This book provides not only the war stratagem and battles (something I care about less) but the political contextualization about how all this crazy stuff fits together. After coming away from this book I am absolutely stunned about what an insane country the United States was then and continues to be today with new reincarnations of the same political and social turmoil that birthed the Civil War. This is a perfect first book to read for people looking to learn about the Civil War. So, the Civil War was obviously about slavery despite the ridiculous revisionists who like to pretend otherwise. In my opinion, the 3 ⁄ 5 compromise did little to diminish the strength of the southern states, only served to legitimize their practice and to hold undue political power. Huge economic growth in the 1850s created more tension between the North and South and accelerated the slavery problem which had been around since the country’s inception. Americans got the edge over Europe by simply having more land, wood, labor all with higher fertility rates and a more educated class. Industrialization was taking off in the North and the South got a bit behind. Wage labor was a pretty new concept coming in at this time and many Americans didn’t like it and saw it as antithetical to republicanism and being master over your own labor. There were also large shifts in the cultural attitudes of women’s role as a women’s rights movement was starting around this time. Lots of the preamble to the war had to do with Polk stealing a ton more land from Mexico and Native Americans and then the South wanting to legalize slavery there. The South was basically obsessed with acquiring new slaveholding land and backed several bids by mercenary groups to capture Cuba and parts of Latin America. The Wilmot Proviso was an unsuccessful 1846 proposal in Congress to ban slavery in the newly acquired territory during the Mexican-American war and the South didn’t like that one bit. During this time, lots of different social attitudes about slavery were pervasive including militant abolitionists. Uncle Tom’s Cabin came out and blew people’s minds and was extremely impactful. Of course the book was banned in the South. Lots of political and legislation maneuvering was happening pre war. The Kansas-Nebraska act created the two states but repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prevented Northern expansion of slavery. And then you have the Dred Scott SCOTUS decision of 1857 which prohibited black people from ever being citizens. For whatever gains there were for the South, there was always Northern abolitionist backlash which helped the new radical Republican party gain more political control when they fractured from the Whig party. The 1857 depression mixed things up and then the Homestead Act also riled up the South who didn’t like the idea of Northern folks spreading their non-slavery ways across the country. The pre-war drama and culture wars really culminated with John Brown, a militant abolitionist, who stormed Harpers Ferry arsenal with like 5 other guys in what appeared to be a very ill conceived attempt to liberate black people in the South with a slave revolt. Even Fredick Douglas told him something like “Hey, you shouldn’t do this, it’s crazy.” John Brown was almost immediately arrested and was sentenced to death for treason. His courtroom speeches are not the words of an unhinged man but someone who knew exactly what he was doing and understood the cultural power of martyrdom. Just read this snippet of his last speech: This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that "all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them" [Matthew 7:12]. It teaches me, further, to "remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them" [Hebrews 13:3]. I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done as I have always freely admitted I have done on behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit; so let it be done! Right? John Brown knew exactly what he was doing and very quickly after execution became a cultural icon. He was an immediate folk hero in the North and a boogeyman to the South. And then Abraham Lincoln was elected as President in 1860. A big realization for me reading this is that the Civil War started not because of all the threats of the South to secede or even because the North finally said “Hey, we’re coming to abolish slavery!”. No. They HATED the progressive Republican party and the new President and they were afraid they would abolish slavery. So the election of Lincoln is what finally prompted the South to revolt. The Confederate constitution was drafted 3 months after the election of Lincoln. And then the matchstick was when Lincoln decided to try to protect Fort Sumter from the South. That was it: war finally broke out. McPhearson, appropriately, spends a lot of this book on the war and its battles. There are so many ups and downs on either side and many, many times where each seemed like they were going to prevail only to have it swing back the other way. Throughout all this, there are bitter political fights in the North with the Peace Democrats who want an armistice, the Black Republicans who supported Lincoln and the more radical abolitionists who didn’t think Lincoln was doing enough. There was tons of social turmoil in the North from draconian measures that limited free speech, to race riots from fear mongering among whites that Lincoln wanted to free slaves and enslave the white race. What seems to differentiate the North and South during this time seems to be lots of political turmoil and internal conflict on the North and more political cohesion to the South which McPherson seems to imply was the South’s undoing because their leadership didn’t stay agile enough to adapt like Lincoln in the North. The Union often had the upper hand in the war because of more sheer numbers and also a superior navy. A river blockade really helped starve trade in the South as well. The South early on bet that they could get Britain to intervene in the war if they stopped their cotton trade but it wasn’t in the cards. Britain and France decided to not get involved and fear fallout with the Union more than loss of the cotton trade. No European power ever recognized the Confederacy as more than belligerent. The Confederacy started to go broke and went fiat and printed a bunch of money and made things worse. At one point the South had 9,000% inflation to the North’s 80%. There were the Bread Riots in the South where women just straight up looted and mobed stores to feed their families. Compare this to what the North started doing: instituted a new income tax, funded higher education, enacted the homestead act, invested in railroad infrastructure and other social programs. The Union congress at this time basically drafted the blueprint for what is now modern America. At some point during the war, Lincoln realized that emancipation and abolishment was necessary to end the war rather than an armistice. But he had the wisdom to know that there was a political timing to these things so he waited for the Emancipation until a string of Union victories. The Union capturing Vicksburg and then Gettysburg were clearly the turning point in the war. This book really does an incredible job talking about Grant and Lee and a slew of other big time military leaders like McClellan and Stonewall Jackson that I’m not really going to touch on but it’s in this book if you want it. The shocking thing was that the war just kept on going and so many more men died that didn’t need to. Jefferson Davis refused to surrender and even fled the Confederate capitol in Richmond after the Yanks finally took it. The battles and carnage went on long after it was obvious the Confederacy was doomed and that their economy was absolutely devastated. The war did result in a legacy of a new federal government that, in my opinion, actually did help average Americans namely federal taxation, a national bank and a welfare program for the Freedmen. What we got at the end was also a slew of new amendments with the abolishment of slavery in the 13th and the beginning of the Reconstruction era which would usher in a great time of racial harmony. KIDDING. No it didn’t but there was a glimpse before the conservative bigots regrouped and kept doing their thing which they kind of keep doing today. The exact same political dynamics at play during the Civil War era are going on now namely the opposition between progressivism and conservatism and between the labor class and the aristocracy. It’s incredible how some things don’t change. ...more |
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Jan 30, 2024
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Jan 09, 2024
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1620976811
| 9781620976814
| 1620976811
| 4.59
| 4,208
| Mar 01, 2022
| Jan 11, 2022
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it was amazing
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The US Constitution is not sacred. This book written by a Black American lawyer is a must read. Mystal is absolutely ruthless as he not only shreds the The US Constitution is not sacred. This book written by a Black American lawyer is a must read. Mystal is absolutely ruthless as he not only shreds the constitution but any originalist argument that flows from it. His main thesis is that the constitution is fundamentally flawed from its inception and was written by straight up aristocratic, slaver white supremecists. Of course, this is irrefutable because it is 100% accurate. You often get the clap back argument “yeah well it was inspired for its time ect.” and Mystal’s answer is: I don’t care it’s still a trash racist document that subjugates Black people from its inception and up to today. Again, you can’t really argue this. The US Constitution, while revolutionary for its time, is an incredibly flawed document that was clearly written with the intent of maintaining white powerful men in their seats of power. And when you consider white supremacy as its intent, the constitution has really been quite successful. Let’s be clear: this book is a polemic against conservative originalists. Mystal HATES conservatives and with good reason: almost everything conservative politicians have done since reconstruction is to stop Black people from having voting rights, be free from police brutality and be able to go into a store that white people can go into. But as a polemic, it’s extremely well argued by someone who clearly knows what he’s talking about. This is a very good book to read to learn all the ammunition needed to counteract original constitutionalists who are very much active and in control. The thing about originalists' arguments is it’s fundamentally indefensible. Originalism is not only morally indefensible and also intellectually as Mystal tears apart every cherry picked originalist argument. One thing Mystal makes clear: there is no intellectual or moral high road from which conservative originalists speak. They understand all the bugs in the constitution and amendments and they constantly contort the law to maintain a de facto apartheid state, police brutality, forced birth, voting restriction, electoral college, the Senate, the filibuster and a host of other things. This book is basically awesome if you’re someone who already thinks the way the author does. He’s unapologetic, fierce and incredibly intelligent. Also, as far as I can tell, he’s totally right. Did I mention he’s hilarious? I would read this right away. ...more |
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Jan 09, 2024
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Jan 01, 2024
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0593316304
| 9780593316306
| 0593316304
| 4.26
| 930
| 2023
| Aug 29, 2023
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it was amazing
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Reality is a collective, hallucinated construct. I don’t read much philosophy but I read lots, and have studied, quantum mechanics. The Rigor of Angels Reality is a collective, hallucinated construct. I don’t read much philosophy but I read lots, and have studied, quantum mechanics. The Rigor of Angels is a beautiful crossroads of three great thinkers, Kant, Borges and Heisenberg and their attempts to explain the inexplicable. What I mean is, when we dive down onto the quantum level and compare it to the macro level, the underpinnings of our assumptions about reality disappear. The more you study the expanse of the universe and down to the quantum level, any harmony about how reality is cobbled together makes absolutely no sense. On the quantum level, there are no “things” only probability wave forms that come into existence when we look at them. How can matter and the macro world, something to us that is tangible and immutable, be made of something that kind of is and isn’t there? This is the paradox that has vexed many people, including Einstein and Schrodinger, ever since observations and mathematics of quantum mechanics happened. What the author does in this book is assert a central thesis: we cannot understand how to harmonize space and time because space and time are mental constructs we’ve created. Meaning, space and time don’t actually exist as an independent reality from us. It is the sheer fact that we are a continuous observer, connecting one moment to the next with memory and physical laws, that creates the concepts of space and time. It is impossible to understand or conceptualize nature or reality because then we would no longer be observers and we would become the very nature that we are trying to understand. We apply our own constructs of reality to what we observe and when we do this, we inevitably find what we call paradoxes. Basically our cognitive limitations put speed limits on our understanding of what we observe and when they don’t make sense, they become paradoxes. Did I just make any sense? Not sure, but I’m going to go with it. I think that is the essence of this book and it is really well done. I was very familiar with Heisenberg before this but not so much with Kant and not at all with Borges. Along with a very readable philosophy in this book you can find some nice personal accounts of these three men and the history surrounding their days. This was an excellent and thought provoking book. ...more |
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161039674X
| 9781610396745
| 161039674X
| 4.08
| 3,327
| Sep 11, 2018
| Sep 11, 2018
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it was amazing
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One of the best economics books I’ve ever read. I’ve read a mountain of economics books, at least over 50, and this is easily top ten. In The Value of One of the best economics books I’ve ever read. I’ve read a mountain of economics books, at least over 50, and this is easily top ten. In The Value of Everything, the author takes you from the history of economics of how value was defined and how it has become deranged today into an enormous financialized rent seeking behemoth that siphons off wealth. This is also a balanced book, mostly apolitical, written by a PHD in economics. It’s not a polemic, it’s a well-thought, well-researched critique about the current economic system. The author gives us a nice overlay of the transformation of “value” and how its definition has changed over time with enormous impact. The TLDR version is that value has been redefined from things that produce into things that don’t produce as long as they are private entities. Meaning, the broad financialization that has occurred since the 1980s has suddenly been deemed to add “value” except that it only increases shareholder value and that anything the government does does not produce value even though the government provides tremendous value to its citizens. It’s this broad redefining of value that has created an enormous rent seeking apparatus that results in wage stagnation and wealth concentration. The author starts at the beginning with classical economics and does a good job with an overview of Adam Smith , Ricardo and Marx and their contributions to what is considered to be valuable or not. Adam Smith helped develop a lot of labor value theory. He believed growth depended on increasing the share of manufacturing and wage laborers and free trade was essential to bring this about. Enemies of growth, accordion and Smith were the protectionist policies of mercantilism as well as guilds protecting artisan privilege and the nobility who squandered its money on consumption and unproductive labor. Smith believed that hoarding cash prevents nations from spreading wealth. Smith’s theories were basically against mercantilism and for more free trade without tariffs and rent seeking. Smith’s free trade principles traced value to labor and not to gold. Ricardo was all about how the distribution of wealth was created from labor and he was also opposed to rent seeking constructions. Marx understood the labor power is what allowed surplus to even happen to begin with which is then exploited by the capitalists. He understood the ingenuity of capitalists who organize workers to create surplus value and he foresaw the deleterious effects of mechanization and financialization and how it undermines workers. There are four types of capitalists: production bearing, commercial bearing, interest bearing and land owners. And then the neoclassical economists overturned the labor value theory. A new theory was developed that dictated that a price is set by the value the buyer gives it and NOT derived from the labor that was created. THIS IS KEY. Flash forward to today and this is the exact same rational greedy drug makers will use when talking about why their medication costs tens of thousands of dollars. They argue the price is high because of the value it brings. The value IS the price even though the costs and labor to produce are way smaller than the price. This is all called marginal utility and it’s part of neoclassical economics. The idea of scarcity also became a very important part of economic theory at this time. Marginal value theory assumes that there is no monopoly of companies to set prices. Marginal value theory creates hyper individualistic economic theory and hyper charges the consumer. It was this shift from classical thinking that saw rent seeking as parasitic, into neoclassical view that saw rent seeking as something that added value to the economy. Now in the modern economy, we count financial products and rent seeking as part of the GDP and consider it to be of productive value. The difference between profits and rent is obscured and it's all taken as productive. Finance made a huge shift in the 1980s into being as a value adding entity but all it did was extract wealth and inflict wage stagnation. From leveraged buyout, stock buybacks, junk bonds, shadow banking, to transaction costs: the majority of Wall Street is an enormous rent seeking apparatus. It’s been the transition from stakeholder to shareholder that has created this paradigm shift. There are only short term profits. That’s it. After the author explains all of this in great detail she then goes on to expound on all the ways the government adds value either by Keynesian economic policies or just straight up direct investment and production of key technologies. The government helped fund or directly created many technologies we use today and that private companies have exploited: semiconductors, touch screens, the internet, GPS, nuclear technology, fracking, battery energy and so many others. 2 ⁄ 3 of pharmaceuticals were developed and funded by the NIH. Let’s be clear: the government directly and indirectly creates value. Now, when I say something like this some people think I’m picking an ideological fight and smell blood in the water and go off on what the government’s role is supposed to be. But these are merely the facts: the government has and does create value. It’s not an ideological turf war, it’s literally the facts. Why do people give a pass to corporate failures but not for government failures? The government invested in both the failed Solyndra and Tesla but you don’t hear about how successful the government was in the EV revolution in Tesla. All you hear about is the failure of Solyndra. The government fails and succeeds just like any other investor. The success of venture capitalists has to do with nothing more or less than happenstance and timing. National accounting doesn’t account for value, employment and profits that the government is responsible for so it makes the government appear unproductive and tons of private companies then capture and claim that value when all they’re doing is rent seeking and concentrating wealth to shareholders. There is so much to this book and it’s explained so incredibly well. I highly recommend everyone read it. ...more |
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Dec 22, 2023
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Jan 04, 2024
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Nov 22, 2023
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Hardcover
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0358455464
| 9780358455462
| 0358455464
| 4.21
| 4,182
| Oct 04, 2022
| Oct 04, 2022
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it was amazing
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If you think things are bad now, go back to 1920. This historical book on a sliver of American history, 1917 through about 1923, is absolutely vital to If you think things are bad now, go back to 1920. This historical book on a sliver of American history, 1917 through about 1923, is absolutely vital to read and understand America itself. Just this small window into American history will teach why American culture and politics is so insane and how incredibly authoritarian and downright fascist America has been. This tale involves largely Woodrow Wilson but a cast of many famous figures like J. Edgar Hoover, Eugene Debs, Emma Goldan, Kate Richards O-Hare and, Mitchel Palmer and many more. While Woodrow Wilson is thought of as a progressive President because of helping labor laws, women’s suffrage, income tax, League of Nations and puting Brandies into the Supreme Court. But, Wilson also ushered in an age of extreme draconian measures that resulted in an enormous war propaganda machine along with harsh limits on free speech. Wilson oversaw the era of the Espionage and Sedition act which were basically created to throw war dissenters in jail. And thrown in jail they were. During this time in America, if you said anything that was derogatory about the draft or America’s decision to enter WWI, you were literally imprisoned. Eugene Debs was sentenced to 10 years for his 1918 Canton speech. Let me repeat: he went to prison for 10 years for giving a speech. Here’s the words that got him thrown in prison: The working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. Look, I know things are nuts in 2023 America, but no one is going to prison for saying something that by today’s standards is quaint. 100 years ago, you were jailed or lynched simply for being who you are or having slightly non-mainstream opinions. This was an era where anti-bolshevik and red scare panic literally drove federal policy across the board and provided the seeds for how the federal government would behave for the next 100 years. A huge realization I had reading this book is that the American federal government agencies and policies were quite literally borne from anti-leftist and anti-immigration fear mongering. Conservatives today who decry federal government intervention seem to lack the understanding that the federal government is extremely conservative to begin with. This book goes into such detailed history during this time. The author covers Wilson’s rationale for entering the war which was because German U-boats sank “innocent” American ships. What the American propaganda press didn’t mention is that the American vessels had munitions for the alleys and so were inviting attack. The US victimized itself to engage in war profiteering and to “spread democracy”. SOUNDS FAMILIAR. Not much has changed in 100 years of American war mongering. During this time the National Guard was routinely used to battle labor strikes where many workers died. Workers during this time enjoyed few federal protections. People were terrorized by the employers into using their wages to buy government war bonds. There were scores of white riots, literal lyncing and terrorism against black people everywhere especially Chicago and St. Louis. Members of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) or “Wobblies” were seen as enemies of the state. Mitchell Palmer, Attorney General, issued many raids against anarchists and socialists and imprisoned many people simply for expressing free speech. Teachers were fired for speaking out against the war and their students were encouraged to rat on them. The American Protective League (APL) was essentially a paramilitary group across 600 cities that did lots of the dirty work fighting anarchists and “German spies” for the federal government. The PostMaster General flagrantly stopped any publications that had any leftist leanings or anti-war sympathies at all. What is described in this book is an era of deep government surveillance, censorship and harsh violations of the constitution and civil and labor rights. This is America. The legacy is entrenched to this day. Yes, civil liberty rights are way better but it’s taken 100 years for the meager results since then and the exact same crap is going on right now. People talk about the deep state and this book is describing the real deep state: the out in the open harsh restrictions of civil and labor rights. The exact same forces are still at play right now in 2023. It is astonishing how some things do not change. Anyway, this was an amazing read. I highly recommend it. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 18, 2023
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Nov 30, 2023
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Nov 17, 2023
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Hardcover
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4.18
| 61,691
| Sep 21, 1998
| Sep 03, 1999
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it was amazing
| The man with a personal slave state piggy bank. My interest was piqued in reading this after having read the recent Cobalt Red about the child and near The man with a personal slave state piggy bank. My interest was piqued in reading this after having read the recent Cobalt Red about the child and near-slave labor happening in current Congo in the cobalt mines. In that book, the author briefly touched on the history of King Leopold II of Belgium and his creation of his own personal slave state of Africa and this book seemed like a good next foray into my deep cynicism about humankind. This is a well told historical account from beginning to end of how Leopold obtained and exploited much of the land of Congo to personally enrich himself and later the Belgium government. An incredible subplot is the activism involved during the turn of the century. I found it highly engaging, appeared to be very well researched and I learned a lot not just about Congo and its exploitation but this period of colonialism in general. The story begins with a John Rawlings who changed his identity to Henry Martin Stanley after moving to New Orleans. Once Stanley became an explorer, he chartered into some of Congo in search for Livingston who had gone missing. During this time, Leopold was growing jealous of the lucrative European colonies in Africa and wanted a piece of the cake and he had his eyes set on the ivory in Congo. Despite being awkward in his youth, Leopold refined his political skills and went about courting not only Stanley to work for him and do more expeditions for the “Congo Free State”, but he earned the backing of philanthropic groups who believed that he was bringing civilization to Congo and would abolish the “Arab slave trade”. Leopold made inroads even in the United States and received the blessing of the President at that time. Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) was created and the ivory boom began. All treaties handed down to the various Congo tribes gave Leopold all land and were just veiled contracts of blatant theft. The Congolese had no idea what they were signing and many were smaller kingdoms with no central authority and bureaucratic know-how that can go along with that. What ensued was blatant exploitation of the Congolese including slavery, forced labor, murder, rape, starvation and every other human rights violation you can think of. After ivory came the rubber boom which exploited the Congolese even more and burested Leopold’s personal coffers. From somewhere like the 1890s and into the beginning of the turn of the century, somewhere around 10 Million Congolese were murdered. For a long time no one, except the perpetrators, had no idea what was going on. Embedded in this story is an incredible human rights effort by several men. A black American man named George Washington Williams wrote an open letter to Leopold about the conditions in Congo and called it a crime against humanity. Two other very notable men were ED Morel and Roger Casement. Morel discovered that slave labor must be happening in Congo simply with accounting forensic. His employer tried to buy him off with silence. So he quit and started his own whistle blowing publication along with Casement. These two men did incredible things to bring to light what was going on in Congo, although they were still somewhat apologetics about British colonization at the time but everything is relative. They suffered enormously for their activism. Casement was executed for “treason” during WWI despite being knighted for writing the whistle blowing Casement Report about Leopold’s Congo. Casement was also gay which I’m sure did not help matters for him. The activism pressure forced Leopold to sell Congo to his own government even though the contract stipulated that he still get paid from further profit from Congo and not from Belgium tax payers. Congo continued to be exploited for its rubber and copper. To this day, the author states there is not really a formal recognition by the Belgium government of the atrocities that Leopold committed. Congo has been irreparably harmed from colonialism and a US backed coup and is currently being exploited for its cobalt mines that fuel the rechargeable battery industry. It’s happening right now. This is a phenomenal read. Pick it up. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 26, 2023
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Oct 12, 2023
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Sep 24, 2023
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Kindle Edition
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my rating |
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4.35
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it was amazing
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Aug 20, 2024
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Jul 06, 2024
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4.19
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it was amazing
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Jun 14, 2024
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Jun 13, 2024
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4.09
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it was amazing
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Jun 18, 2024
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Jun 05, 2024
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4.04
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it was amazing
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May 14, 2024
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Apr 10, 2024
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4.06
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it was amazing
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Jun 13, 2024
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Mar 22, 2024
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4.21
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it was amazing
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Jun 05, 2024
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Mar 18, 2024
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4.14
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it was amazing
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Mar 21, 2024
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Mar 14, 2024
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4.20
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really liked it
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May 29, 2024
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Mar 06, 2024
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4.05
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it was amazing
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May 20, 2024
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Feb 29, 2024
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3.87
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it was amazing
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Mar 07, 2024
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Feb 29, 2024
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4.24
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it was amazing
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Mar 2024
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Feb 27, 2024
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4.41
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it was amazing
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Feb 28, 2024
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Feb 21, 2024
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4.13
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liked it
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Feb 21, 2024
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Feb 15, 2024
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4.40
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it was amazing
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Jul 31, 2024
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Jan 10, 2024
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4.39
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it was amazing
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Jan 30, 2024
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Jan 09, 2024
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4.59
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it was amazing
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Jan 09, 2024
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Jan 01, 2024
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4.26
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it was amazing
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Dec 15, 2023
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Nov 30, 2023
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4.08
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it was amazing
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Jan 04, 2024
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Nov 22, 2023
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4.21
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it was amazing
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Nov 30, 2023
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Nov 17, 2023
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4.18
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it was amazing
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Oct 12, 2023
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Sep 24, 2023
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