Re: What are your favorite books you've read? - book discussion thread
Heh, yeah, I always found the CIA's involvement with the Animal Farm movie amusing and depressing in more or less equal measure. Didn't know about changing the ending of the 1984 movie - presumably the earlier BBC(?) version, not the one made in '84 with John Hurt. Interesting read, anyway.
Re: What are your favorite books you've read? - book discussion thread
Best fiction book: The Hobbit
Next: Will be reading all 4 GOT books later this year
Best econ book: HET Vol1+2 by Rothbard
Current: FX risk hedging ****. Virtually worthless
Next: Something totalitarian propaganda for a change, maybe Affluent Society or something like that.
Re: What are your favorite books you've read? - book discussion thread
I just finished reading 'The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich' by William L. Shirer.
and 'Gestapo: The Truth Behind An Evil Legend' by Rupert Butler.
Both interesting reads that expose the 'gangster politics' of Hitlers regime.
I have just ordered 'The Wall' by John Hersey, the true story of 40 men and women who escaped from the Warsaw ghetto.
Other good reads in my collection include
'The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy' by Martin Gilbert
'Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans And The Holocaust' by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen.
Both recommended for anyone who has an interest in the subject, but be warned, there are some pretty gruesome and heartbreaking personal accounts in both of these books.
Also recommended,
'Auschwitz: The Nazis & The Final Solution' by Lawrence Rees
'The Nazis: A Warning From History' by Lawrence Rees.
Both of these books have been made into documentaries by the BBC that are well worth watching.
Re: What are your favorite books you've read? - book discussion thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by All-In Flynn
Heh, yeah, I always found the CIA's involvement with the Animal Farm movie amusing and depressing in more or less equal measure.
Speaking of depressing, the best book I know of on the activities of the CIA--a book I would strongly recommend for anyone interested in studying American history--would be this one:
Reading that book is pretty freaking depressing but also very interesting and organized in such a way that you don't have to read it from front to back. You can just flip to the particular country/victim you're interested in at the moment. So it's a cool reference book.
Also, about the CIA involvement with "Animal Farm". I only very recently found out about that. First read about that in a cool cracked article (scroll down).
Quote:
Originally Posted by All-In Flynn
Didn't know about changing the ending of the 1984 movie - presumably the earlier BBC(?) version, not the one made in '84 with John Hurt. Interesting read, anyway.
Yeah that was news to me too. The only 1984 version I've seen is the one you're talking about with John Hurt. I thought that movie did as good of a job as you can of adapting to Orwell's book, and IIRC the ending stuck faithfully to Orwell's 1984 ending, including the "gin-scented tears" part.
Also, I was in a rush with my last post, and forgot to add that I wanted to correct myself when I said that "The Orwell Diversion" was aptly titled. It's not really an apt title considering Carey's misconstruing of Orwell's views. Although I would say it IS apt in the sense that the American propaganda system has used Orwell's work to divert attention away from the main source of power, and thus the main threat to the general population in our capitalist society, and in the process this diversion has left many misconceptions of Orwell's views.
For example, I won't name names, but in the last year I recall a person on this board insinuating that "Animal Farm" indicated that socialism (what I would simply call workers' self-management) probably wouldn't work. As if the point of the novel was to say, "Hey even if you overthrow capitalism, you'll just end up creating a system just as bad and authoritarian if not worse, so don't even try, just be happy with our current ****ed up system". I quickly pointed out that the author, Orwell, was a socialist, so that obviously couldn't possibly be the point of the book. And in fact the whole point of "Animal Farm", which is a caricature of Stalinist Russia, was to illustrate that Stalinist Russia was NOT socialism at all, but a total bastardization of what socialism is really about which is summed up pretty well here:
Quote:
Since its origins, socialism has meant the liberation of working people from exploitation. As the Marxist theoretician Anton Pannekoek observed, "this goal is not reached and cannot be reached by a new directing and governing class substituting itself for the bourgeoisie," but can only be "realized by the workers themselves being master over production." Mastery over production by the producers is the essence of socialism, and means to achieve this end have regularly been devised in periods of revolutionary struggle, against the bitter opposition of the traditional ruling classes and the 'revolutionary intellectuals' guided by the common principles of Leninism and Western managerialism, as adapted to changing circumstances. But the essential element of the socialist ideal remains: to convert the means of production into the property of freely associated producers and thus the social property of people who have liberated themselves from exploitation by their master, as a fundamental step towards a broader realm of human freedom.
When many people in the US (I obv can't speak for other countries) hear the word "socialism" today they often think of "big evil government", or evil cold war Russian, or the totalitarian nightmare of "1984". This misconception itself is a remarkable achievement of our propaganda system, and Alex Carey wrote about how that misconception was manufactured in his aforementioned book:
Quote:
During World War 2 it was necessary for American business to curb its 1930s campaigns, which sought to arouse public anxiety about the Roosevelt administration carrying the country towards communism or fascism. In the last year of the war, however, American business, and the NAM [national association of manufactures] in particular, geared up, as it had after World War 1, to beat back both government intervention and the growing power of unions. Beginning in 1945, the postwar conservative assault on public opinion revived the two dominant themes of the 1930's campaigns: identification of the traditional American free-enterprise system with social harmony, freedom, democracy, the family, the church, and patriotism; and identification of all government regulation of the affairs of business, and all liberals who supported such 'interference', with communism and subversion.
"Taking the Risk Out of Democracy" by Alex Carey, pg. 27
Quote:
By 1946 the NAM was only one of a great number of business sponsored organizations that were co-operating to drench the country with anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-union and anti-New Deal propaganda.
"Taking the Risk Out of Democracy" by Alex Carey, pg. 29
Last edited by ILOVEPOKER929; 06-23-2012 at 04:02 AM.
Re: What are your favorite books you've read? - book discussion thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by ILOVEPOKER929
Speaking of depressing, the best book I know of on the activities of the CIA--a book I would strongly recommend for anyone interested in studying American history--would be this one:
Reading that book is pretty freaking depressing but also very interesting and organized in such a way that you don't have to read it from front to back. You can just flip to the particular country/victim you're interested in at the moment. So it's a cool reference book.
Also, about the CIA involvement with "Animal Farm". I only very recently found out about that. First read about that in a cool cracked article (scroll down).
Yeah that was news to me too. The only 1984 version I've seen is the one you're talking about with John Hurt. I thought that movie did as good of a job as you can of adapting to Orwell's book, and IIRC the ending stuck faithfully to Orwell's 1984 ending, including the "gin-scented tears" part.
Also, I was in a rush with my last post, and forgot to add that I wanted to correct myself when I said that "The Orwell Diversion" was aptly titled. It's not really an apt title considering Carey's misconstruing of Orwell's views. Although I would say it IS apt in the sense that the American propaganda system has used Orwell's work to divert attention away from the main source of power, and thus the main threat to the general population in our capitalist society, and in the process this diversion has left many misconceptions of Orwell's views.
For example, I won't name names, but in the last year I recall a person on this board insinuating that "Animal Farm" indicated that socialism (what I would simply call workers' self-management) probably wouldn't work. As if the point of the novel was to say, "Hey even if you overthrow capitalism, you'll just end up creating a system just as bad and authoritarian if not worse, so don't even try, just be happy with our current ****ed up system". I quickly pointed out that the author, Orwell, was a socialist, so that obviously couldn't possibly be the point of the book. And in fact the whole point of "Animal Farm", which is a caricature of Stalinist Russia, was to illustrate that Stalinist Russia was NOT socialism at all, but a total bastardization of what socialism is really about which is summed up pretty well here:
When many people in the US (I obv can't speak for other countries) hear the word "socialism" today they often think of "big evil government", or evil cold war Russian, or the totalitarian nightmare of "1984". This misconception itself is a remarkable achievement of our propaganda system, and Alex Carey wrote about how that misconception was manufactured in his aforementioned book:
I just picked up the prince from a used book store.
My books:
1984 - obviously
Animal Farm - 4 legs good, 2 legs bad
Guns, Germs and Steel - to this day probably has had the most powerful impact on the way I look at political/sociological problems.
Enders Game - Just started reading this series. Really interesting science fiction. I love interesting ways to look at humans interacting with aliens.
Side note: as much as I love and was moved by 1984 I think it is the incorrect dystopia as predicted by the great writers of the 20th century. Ultimately I think we will go the Brave New World route and soma ourselves into oblivion.
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