China's Political Development

    The first essay in this collection is called Sixty Years of Political Development, but I think a more apt title would be Forty Years of Economic Development. According to the author Yu Keping, The PRC’s leaders spent the first 25 years making a mess of everything. The 1950’s efforts to suppress the “counterrevolutionaries” got millions killed, along with whatever these men and women had to contribute. Then you had the “Great Leap Forward” which starved millions and wiped out the steel supply, and don’t even bother to mention the Cultural Revolution. But since the late 1970’s, capitalism has been welcome in China. So it looks like there’s been plenty of economic development. But has there been political development? It doesn’t seem like personal rights have really improved. If the Falun Gong, a trivial sect, is persecuted, what does that say about politics?

    Democracy is discussed here, and it is a very touchy issue in China. According to Huang Weiping, China’s leaders never disparaged the idea of democracy, but would it work in China? When in the country’s history was their ever any kind of democratic policy? Perhaps decentralization is a start, with individual cities and towns being allowed to make some decisions for themselves. This would probably happen in areas far from the capital, like in Xingiang province, where a sizeable number of non-Chinese speakers live. But what happens when the people of a town object to a policy of the central government? Supposing a town finds itself the site of hydraulic fracturing, and complains about the pollution; are the biggest complainers going to be forcibly silenced? What happens when a newspaper prints an unflattering story about the official in charge? The issue of labor rights is also a difficult one, and it remains to be seen what happens to the trade unions.

    One fault I find in this book is that the authors, almost all of whom are from China, are writing from a non-western perspective. Democracy is a European invention, while China has a long history of central control, a leftover from the days of monarchy. Are their benefits to having a non-democratic society? The Arab oil states are not a democracy, but the people have lived relatively well for the past 40 years, with opportunities for education and no problems with healthcare. It’s all paid for by the monarch, who owns the country’s oil wells. I guess you could say that royal charity keeps the Saudis happy. But China has had massive problems with hunger, overcrowding, and pollution. Thanks to the one-child policy the population is aging rapidly. If there’s a crop failure and the people are driven wild by hunger, will the central government be able to suppress dissent, or will it be just like the French Revolution?

And Grandma Said: Iroquois Teachings As Passed Down Through the Oral Tradition

Tom Porter is a member of the Mohawk Nation near the Saint Lawrence River, and an archivist of Mohawk language and teachings. This book is a collection of philosophies he gathered from his relatives over the years, ranging from creation stories to musings about the language. I think the language chapter is the best, because it’s quite funny; he compares English translation to watching a black and white TV. Words in Mohawk are far more descriptive than the English translation, such as “this red shirt” in English would be “this shirt is the color of the blood that flows through my body” in Mohawk. They don’t say “bury the dead,” but “wrap him in the earth.” The language is very descriptive and metaphoric, while English, by comparison, is a bit blunt. That’s why English translation of Native American can’t really be accurate.

But here’s where an English speaker might think of Mohawk language as blunt; Porter, as per tradition, refers to older persons as “grandpa,” so it’s a little hard to tell which are his blood relatives. From his description, life was clan oriented. As for school, he describes it as bizarre and annoying. On the first day, the Mohawk social worker says to them “you have to learn to read and write so you can sit behind a white man’s desk in a shirt and tie and push paper, not like your elders who shovel manure and husk corn.” Now imagine saying that to a callous-palmed farm boy in the Midwest. Do you think he’d want to go from a “manly” job to cubicle hell?

The chapter on the St. Regis Mohawk school starts with some bad memories, like white teachers hitting the kids with rulers. But then it turns into comedy. They have to sing “Yankee Doodle” which to them is completely alien, because their music consists of water drumming. Then they sing about a bridge falling down, or about weasels going around bushes, and wondering what kind of song is this? They think the teacher is practicing witchcraft because when she spins, the seat goes up (because of the screw in the chair, but none of them have furniture like that.) Then they have “art” involving a Christmas, and he’s wondering why they’d chop down a tree and put it IN the house. As for the popcorn stringing, well they’ve been told that you never, ever, ever, waste food! He thought the teachers had gone crazy.

While I found a lot of this book hilarious, my only criticism is that it’ll be a tough sell to get non-Mohawk to read it. I wonder if a straight autobiography would be more appealing, with an emphasis on the funny or shocking parts, the way Frank McCourt did with Angela’s Ashes. The “fish out of water” concept always makes for great storytelling. Maps would be welcome too, as I had some trouble understanding exactly where the stories too place, whether it was on or off the reservation, in the USA, or Canada. Nonetheless, I recommend using this book with middle school students as part of US history, especially the “Trading Eyes” chapter. I can just imagine their faces when they learn that “squaw” means “woman’s reproductive organ.”

Then again maybe not. It might go from being a racial slur to a scatological obscenity.

Intelligence: The Secret World of Spies

J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI for 50 years, wasted a whole lot of time. He devoted millions of dollars in money, man hours, and equipment just to spy on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Now what was the end result? They had tapes of Dr. King cavorting with his female admirers! It was all part of a scheme by Hoover to discredit Dr. King, and it didn’t work. The tapes didn’t turn anyone against King, and it didn’t drive him to take his own life. As for Hoover, the FBI made few gains during his tenure, with no major targeting of drug cartels nor organized crime. Hoover was interested only in bank robbers and subversives. According to this book, the US intelligence services had a problem with direction. When they were headed by one man (in this case Hoover) they were completely subordinate to him and his ridiculous policies.

    Each chapter in this book is written by a different expert in the field of intelligence, both in the USA and abroad. In the chapter Intelligence Since 9/11, the two authors, Gerald Hughes and Kristan Stoddart, discuss how 9/11 and the 1945 Soviet threat had similar outcomes, but different origins. 9/11 may definitely be an example of a government “caught napping,” but the Soviet paranoia was greatly exaggerated.

    While the book is generally open minded and examines all sides fairly, I would have like to see more case studies and comparison. There have been many unique spying efforts in the Cold War and in the 25 years since, so it would be great to learn about them and how the CIA has developed in the years since the USSR crumbled. I would also like to have seen someone compare the differences in the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security. Maybe compare the CIA, MI6, and the Israeli intelligence service.

The Last Scroll

For some reason or another you can always find adventure in Europe. Look at all the Bourne Identity films, James Bond instalments, Da Vinci Code; there’s something inherently arcane and mysterious about traveling in Italy or France. Dodging danger and mystery, the protagonist finds himself at some kind of spa in Italy, and comes in contact with a recently translated Dead Sea Scroll, with a prophecy that arouses controversy, not to mention the ire of some fanatics who’d like to kill him.

    The novel reads in the first person, all in the present; he gets up, wonders where he is, sees the open window. It is unusual to see a book written this way, but it works well for the story. For some reason when you write a travel story like this you want everything in the present tense, almost like a journal. I guess it allows you to capture the sights and sounds (and even perhaps the smells) of Italy. Believe me, Italy has a unique smell, and I can remember how shocked I was when I visited Florence all those years ago. I said to my mother “it smells just like Israel, I don’t get it.” Must be something about being so close to the Mediterranean.

Reading Capitalist Realism

There’s a discussion in this book between Mark Fisher and Jodi Dean in which they debate the “fun” of capitalism. Now you might be wondering how the aspect of “fun” fits in, but it does in many ways. The allegedly “liberal” promoters of anti-capitalist ideology, despite their criticism of capitalism, secretly enjoy the pleasures of it. Do they feel guilty for watching TV shows? Do they hate themselves for loving Youtube so much? Perhaps, after all is said and done, they have some ambivalence about using Amazon to get books at a discount. There’s no way anything could be done in their world without capitalism, because nobody in their right mind would work hard for zero reward.

    Reading Capitalist Realism is a collection of essays on capitalism by various economists. Caren Irr, for instance, writes on how the anti-capitalist platform can generate unrealistic goals, while middle-class researchers like Barbara Ehrenreich (author of Nickel and Dimed) use an educated approach while avoiding taking sides. Others find it hard to get candid interviews from “the poor” whom they’re studying, thanks to politics. In some countries you can get killed by the government for speaking out, and here in the USA, while you probably won’t be jailed for complaining about Walmart, you could be in trouble if they’re the chief employer in the town.

    While this book is full of solid academic discussions on the pros and cons of capitalism, I think it’s lacking in some ways. I would have liked to have seen arguments between economists who are seriously polarized, not because I’d want to take sides, but because you can discover great things when you pit two minds against each other. Keep in mind something that Dr. Thomas Sowell said about Occupy Wall Street; despite their complaints about capitalism, they spent an awful lot of time with their iPhones.

A Likely Story: One Summer With Lillian Hellman

The description on the book jacket sounds exciting; a teenage girl lacks confidence in the early 1980’s, feels out of place at her posh New England private boarding school,  and asks her idol Lillian Hellman for a job as a domestic. Hellman is nasty from the get go, and turns out to an old witch. But that’s where my attention span ended. This book is repetitive, drags on and on, so by page 50 I had to give up. I never got to read about all the nasty stuff in this book, because I couldn’t get past the author’s terrible writing. She spends too many pages on picking up and putting away.

I’m not even sure if there can be any surprises. Lillian Hellman is renowned, but nowhere near as much as others. I never read any of her works in high school or college, and anyone under 35 years old will probably be more familiar with Harper Lee than Hellman. Finding out that Hellman was a mean old hag was not a surprise. It wouldn’t be hard for me to believe it.

Queering Christianity

Here is a collection of essays on gay Americans and Christianity. Rachelle Brown begins with her discussion of the “radical love of Jesus” by comparing a same sex union to a kitchen design. The perfect kitchen design allows readiness, exploration, participation, discovery, and renewal. No argument here, I bet that the family that cooks together stays together. It’s not unusual either for ethnic dishes, like Gumbo, injera, and couscous to be made as one big pot that is shared communally.

Robert Shore-Gross writes of the basis of LGBT acceptance stemming from the doctrine of acceoting all faiths equally. Christian and Buddhist teachings both have similar messages, so why not learn from both? He includes a quote from Dharmasamgiti Sutra; understand great compassion, and you have learned the basis of all others.

Do Federal Social Programs Work?

When the US Constitution was drawn up, it said that the Federal Government’s job was to defend the nation, coin money, oversee Federal lands, and provide courts of appeal. Local police, health, education, local courts, and sewage would be the states’ problem. Most states, in turn, declare those things to be the local government’s problem. It wasn’t until the 1900’s that the idea of education, public health, garbage collection, and public assistance in some form or another came to be seen as entitlements. But when it came to government funded services, the question was, is, and always will be “who’s going to pay for it?”

Some progressives, like John Dewey, argued that freedom is useless when you live in poverty. Court cases, like USA versus Butler, argued that the Federal government can spend all the money it wants. But hang on, what will the voters say? I can imagine the conservatives in the Deep South saying “tax, and I vote you out” while the liberals in the “Blue States” will say “make it an entitlement and tax the rich to pay for it.” It was FDR that started many of the Federally funded enterprises, like the Hoover Dam and the TVA, but at the same time, a recent book called “Rainwater Harvesting” shows that flood control and other environmental improvements can be done with no money, just a lot of manpower. Groups like Common Ground, which creates farms in empty lots, run more on labor than money.

The book doesn’t favor one side over the other. It makes good use of charts for data, education, health, etc. Unfortunately, it doesn’t use case studies (like “The Poor Among Us”) and doesn’t discuss blue-collar apprenticeships, high school internships, or requiring municipal projects to hire local residents. Then again, a lot of these programs exist only on the local level. Perhaps it’s easier for a city or town to manage local programs than for the Federal government to manage something across 2000 miles?

The Textbook of Personality Disorders

Ever dealt with a kid who only ate grilled cheese? Or a kid who claimed he was allergic to all cheeses except chemically processed American cheese, and got mad at you when you insisted that his “allergy” didn’t make sense? What about that kid who was always grabbing stuff and throwing it into the other kids’ faces? I’m sure you’ve met someone whose life story impressed you, and then you found out they were lying about it. I certainly had that experience, and when I confronted her, she didn’t care, she just moved on to another sucker who’d be her captive audience. There are all people with personality disorders.

The Textbook of Personality Disorders makes clear that these are not “mental” disorders. There are no hallucinations or hearing weird voices. It’s all about motivation, cognition, and avoidance of certain things. In chapter one, we read about a man who misinterprets what people say, holds grudges, and feels slights more easily than others. We also read about narcissism, in particular a case where a person is deluded as to what he’ll accomplish, holding unrealistic goals.

This book also makes clear that a lot of the disorders are “made” and not “born.” They’re often the result of nurture rather than nature, the product of overstimulation in infancy. ASPD, for instance, can generate a total lack of regard for others, occasionally leading to violent behavior. The therapies outlined in this book focus on things like CBT, or Cognitive Behavior Therapy. It stresses coping skills, not cures.

But there’s one thing absent from this book, and that is the ways in which these disorders effect the individuals family and/or school environment. I’ve seen a lot of people with extreme phobias or narcissism who are enabled by their families. It would be a welcome change to see some advice on how the families can deal with the individual so that their behavior doesn’t create a hardship.

The Power of Huacas: Change and Resistance in the Andean World of Colonial Peru

Claudia Brosseder’s book portrays pre-Columbian religion as the unifying factor among Peru’s natives. The term Huaca (wak’a in the original language) means “sacred object” or some inanimate structure, like a burial mound, where spirits were thought to reside. It’s not exclusive to Peru; other cultures, like Japanese Shinto, had similar animistic beliefs. But in this case, it was more significant because it allowed the people to keep some independence under colonialism.

From the start, Brosseder makes clear that Peru’s natives weren’t all swayed by Christianity. It was introduced by their Spanish Conquistadores, and since the natives had no rights, Christianity didn’t seem very welcoming either. Indigenous religion continued into the 1600’s, but the Jesuits made efforts to lure the people away from it. Unlike the Franciscans, the Jesuits permitted local religious customs along with Christian ones, so they weren’t entirely averse to animistic beliefs.  However, they did use sneaky tactics with the natives, such as offering rewards to those that were cooperative with the missionaries and using them to influence others.

The author discusses other reasons for Spain’s proselytizing in Peru, such as the protestant versus Catholic conflict in Europe. With Catholic Spain fighting Protestant-led forces in the Netherlands, perhaps Spain’s Bishops saw Latin America as a recruiting ground. But at the same time, Spain was also the nation that had a violent Inquisition, and that didn’t offer much encouragement. If Spanish speaking Priests wanted to stamp out the belief in demons, then violent sermons would not have been much help.

Outsourcing: All You Need To Know

Outsourcing has been so much in the news for the last decade, usually demonized as the business that stole our business. This book portrays it as not only a major change in the labor market, but also a change to profits. The concept of having a popular US product, such as Nike footwear, manufactured in Asia can also be a way to subliminally advertise it in that continent. The same would hold true if NBA shirts were manufactured in Nigeria.

Dell Computers are used as an example in the book for the outsourcing of administration, not just manufacturing. If payroll recording and processing are outsourced, the company is no longer responsible for it. For a huge corporation, payroll can run up a big bill in work hours and effort, but if you hire another company to handle payroll, you rid yourself of the responsibility. You’ll cut out the middlemen and have more time for other things.

The book also covers rubrics and contracts. Everything must be clearly outlined, and it must be clear, according to the contract, as to who assume liability. You don’t want to outsource to a company in Bangladesh and get sued because they used child labor and stole their wages. Delivery of good requires a contract, because you don’t want to find out at the last minute that the foreign made Nikes require passive import duty, thanks to a tariff on goods from that country.

While this book was definitely thorough, I would have like to see more case studies and examples of outsourcing being used. It’s being used for computer support services, with great success, and even 30 years ago it was used by manufacturers who moved some of their factories to Asia. Outsourcing has spread to other industries, such as medicine, with US citizens travelling to India for heart surgery and to Thailand for sex changes. There’s even a scholarship fund that sends minority students from the USA to study medicine in Cuba. Perhaps we’ll soon see education being outsourced too?

Beyond The Surface by Jack Spencer

Jack Spencer creates beautiful artwork. His photographs are imaginative manifestations of emotions, evoking the greatest works of Ansel Adams and Robert Mapplethorpe. Never mind the one on the cover, that uses color. Most of his works are in black and white, and they are even more beautiful, no matter what the subject. One of the photos, titled Mezquit, is of what appears to be two boys beside a tree. The boys and the tree are in silhouette, and the shapes give off an eerie glow. These images are both beautiful and haunting to see.

Yoga and the Path of the Urban Mystic

Darren Main, doesn’t mince words, he gets right to his point; we often get so caught up in getting ahead of everybody else that we forget about ourselves. We go crazy because education, jobs, and social life are so incredibly competitive that we neglect our own spiritual fulfillment.

He begins a chapter by discussing Maya, or the way to appreciate mundane things. During a meditational exercise, he is able to look at a tree (a common sight that most would barely care for) and find great beauty in it. As the book progresses, he describes how yoga helped improve his health, concentration, and ability to adjust to modern living. Samtosha, or the state of contentment, is described heavily in this book. He doesn’t trash materialism; on the contrary, the philosophy here encourages you to never make rash judgments of others. Samtosha encourages you to seek contentment in what you have already, before seeking contentment in more than you already have. It kind of reminds you of that line from Star Wars, where Yoda, thinking Luke is unready to be a Jedi, says “always his mind was on the future, never was his mind on where he was!”

Perhaps the problems that necessitate the philosophy of the Yogi are really an American problem. Everything in the USA is competitive, and our people are encouraged to take out huge loans to go to college, buy huge houses, and drive huge gas-guzzling cars. We end up working all our lives to pay for these things, because the average American family doesn’t want to cram into a tiny apartment and drive a tiny car. Europe, by comparison, is smaller on all scales, with small families, small apartments, and small cars. Teenage girls aren’t pressured to be popular, women don’t go crazy about their hair, they have children later than Americans.

Maybe the first step in the path to fulfilment is to learn to live without the things everyone else has.

Berlin: A Green Archipelago

Before I review this book, I must first mention a short film about Berlin that I saw at the TimesUp movie night. The Invisible Frame, it is called, where Tilda Swinton cycles around the perimeter of West Berlin, a year before the wall came down. I got the feeling that West Berlin, despite fixed boundaries and being landlocked, was doing quite well for itself. I saw closely-packed homes, parks, gardens, and none of the pinched crowding I expected to see. It was nothing like the old city of Kowloon in Hong Kong.

This unusual book, Berlin: A Green Archipelago, was written as a pamphlet in 1977, and printed in Ithaca by a German professor working in the USA. It is a manifesto for turning Berlin into a planned community that would accommodate residential, commercial, and open spaces. There would even be areas where Gypsies would be allowed to camp. In the first chapter it says that Berlin has fixed boundaries that can’t expand, so the architects would have to take into account the issue of overcrowding.

Rather than call for demolition and (what Americans call) urban renewal, the manifesto suggests creating a grid that would include existing buildings and make room for new ones. This makes sense because it allows streets large enough for buses to get through, and avoids the creation of enclaves that are badly served by public transit.

Though I love the ideas in the manifesto, a lot of them eventually became unnecessary. The unification of Germany in 1989 eliminated the need for a lot of the space mentioned in here, because the population would shift to where there was employment. After the Berlin Wall came down, the “no man’s land” on the East German side became available, as did previously undesired areas. On the opposite side of the argument are huge apartment blocks that are being demolished because there’s nobody to rent them to; people have abandoned communities where there is no employment.

I would encourage the reading of this book to anybody studying urban planning or architecture. It definitely has some important points about urban living.

Lanahan Cases in Developmental Psychopathology

One of the real-life cases in this book was a six year old boy who liked girl stuff; dolls, girls’ clothes, playing with the girls at school and not the boys. It drove his mother crazy, infuriated his father, and left them tearing their hair out trying to get him to do gender appropriate things. He loved going to the home of a cousin of the same age, so he could play dress-up in her clothes. If you’re wondering, the answer is yes, his aunt and uncle were seriously creeped out!

I don’t know when this was written, but transgender kids are all over the news nowadays, being interviewed by Barbara Walters. Twenty years ago, however, the parents would not have been encouraged to allow their son to wear a dress to school. The chapter, as with all others, comes with questions to ponder, such as how you’d feel in the clothes of the other gender, and having to do gender stereotyped activities. Would you feel bored? Out of place? Generally uncomfortable?

There are more cases in this book, equally important, mostly involving children. Some involve anxiety that keeps kids out of school, or teenagers with PTSD. All of them are worth reading, because they’re all the kind of things that a therapist will deal with. No theories here like in the usual psychology textbook, no going on and on about Vygotsky, Freud, and Piaget. These are the real things that a therapist will deal with.

But the case of the transgender kid was probably the most interesting. The next volume could be a whole book about families coping with this.

Rainwater Harvesting For Drylands and Beyond

Rainwater is seen both as a useful resource and a waste product. On one hand it keeps the plants fresh, but on the other hand is can wash polluted road runoff into the rivers. This book is about how to find a balance through conservation, and a lot of hard work. It’s meant for arid lands, where everything is dry and you have cactuses, but when it rains in arid lands, the soil can be washed away. The rain will eat away the soil, flush it downhill, and your backyard can disappear in days. As for lost soil, it ends up downstream and silts up the waterways.

Lancaster begins with simple rock dams, easily built with no cement or tools, to slow the downhill flow of water. The book progresses to another problem with drainage in the USA, and that is the pavement. When huge swaths of land are paved, water doesn’t soak into the soil, but into storm drains, which drain into the waterways. Not only does this flush all the chemicals from autos into the rivers, but since the water doesn’t drain into the aquifer, it goes dry. You’ll end up having to pump water up, and that requires energy. Lancaster recommends starting the dams at the top of the hill, and building more as you move downward. As for road runoff, he gives step-by-step plans for “rain gardens” which soak up road runoff and allow the water to drain directly into the aquifers.

The author rails against culverts, arguing that huge pipes running under roads are “shotguns”  that create higher pressure and more erosion. I have to wonder what effect the LA River has, because it’s been culverted for decades. If the banks weren’t paved, would the vegetation absorb the pollution? If so, what about the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn?

One basic tenet of this book, with regards to landscaping, is to go native. Lawns don’t exist in nature in the Southwest, and not only do they guzzle water (pumped from the aquifers) but when they dry out you get fires. Gold courses are notorious water wasters in Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico, leaving less water for drinking and firefighting. Lancaster stresses native trees, shrubs, and grasses that grow with limited water. Most important, he provides ways to do these things on your own, with no need for expensive landscaping, just a shovel and a strong back. No capital needed!

Focused Observations

Greenwood and James know how important it is to observe a child before you try to teach them anything. More important than what you record is what you choose to leave out, because reports can become repetitive. Take for instance a report on a 3 year old and an 11 year old. The 3 year old isn’t going to read, write, or do math, but the older child will. Since they are different, focus the observation differently; if the three year old is doing a puzzle, how long does it take and which one do they choose? Does the 3 year old play well with others? For the 11 year old, you can report on the math and writing abilities.

Next come the portfolio collections. Have criteria for goals ready, and you can gather more information. Sharing information with families is discussed as well, and the authors recommend that everything be kept positive, never complain, always be specific, and do everything according to the parents’ convenience.

The Geographical Encyclopedia of the Holocaust in Hungary

I’ve heard Hungarian Holocaust survivors talk with nostalgia about life before the war. They spoke of the beautiful cities, the cafes, how civilized it all was. The Jews of Hungary were stereotyped as urbane, well-educated, multilingual, and cultured. But this book doesn’t restrict itself to the upper classes of Hungarian Jews; it collects the stories of the small town Jewish populations, and how they were wiped out.

Hungary was one of the last nations conquered by the Nazis, at a time when they were losing the war. Though Hungary’s government was pro-Nazi (probably out of fear of the Soviets) they refused to hand over the Jewish inhabitants until later in the war. While a sizeable number of Hungarian Jews survived the Holocaust, few returned afterward.

As a well-researched text, it’s a valuable tool for anyone studying the Holocaust and its effects on Europe’s Jews. It’s also important for historians on a personal level. If your ancestors came from a particular town in Hungary, this three-volume text will let you learn all about that community.