Private,world-sized,Heaven

«So almost certainly there is enough land in the sky to give every member of the human species, back to the first ape-man, his own private, world-sized heaven – or hell».

2001: A Space Odyssey

Reasoning

«Henry Humidor purchased a box of very rare, very expensive cigars and insured them, among other things, against fire. Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile of cigars, he filed a claim against the insurance company. In his claim, Henry stated the cigars were lost “in a series of small fires.” The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason: he had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion. Henry sued and won! In delivering the ruling, the judge agreed that the claim was frivolous. He stated that the man nevertheless held a policy from the company in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure against fire, without adequately defining what is considered to be an “unacceptable fire,” and was obligated to pay the claim. Rather than endure a lengthy and costly appeals process, the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid Henry $15,000 for the rare cigars he lost in the “fires.” But … After Henry cashed the check, the insurance company had him arrested on twenty-four counts of arson! With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case used against him, Henry Humidor was convicted of intentionally setting fire to his insured property and was sentenced to twenty-four months in jail and a $24,000 fine. Welcome to the wonderful world of reasoning».

The Little Blue Reasoning Book

KGB Friends

«The most important special action being planned at the beginning of the Andropov era was in Greece, where a group of army colonels seized power in April 1967, suspended parliamentary government and declared martial law. The Greek Communist Party (KKE) was driven underground and its leaders temporarily lost touch with Moscow. In July 1967 the KGB was formally instructed by the CPSU Central Committee to renew contact with the underground Party (a task it had doubtless already begun) and to give it “political and material assistance.”⁵ The “material assistance” included both financial subsidies, usually handed over to Party representatives in Budapest,⁶ and help in preparing for guerrilla warfare. 

The Centre decreed that Department V’s main priority for 1968 should be to set up sabotage and intelligence groups (DRGs) on Greek territory to prepare for an uprising against the military regime.⁷ Department V also made preparations for possible guerrilla operations in Italy. The leaders of the PCI were seriously afraid of an Italian military putsch on the Greek model and had requested Soviet assistance in preparing the Party for the possibility that, like the KKE, it would have to transform itself into an illegal underground movement.⁸

In 1968, all KGB residencies were sent operational letters headed “Recommendations for Creating the Necessary Conditions on the Territory of a Potential Adversary for Special Group [DRG] Operations in an Emergency.” The letter to the resident in Athens, Ivan Petrovich Kislyak (codenamed MAYSKY), added: “It is not possible that the course of events will in practice require us to assist local progressive forces in the near future, and we must therefore make preparations for this in advance.”⁹ The Centre issued instructions that all locally recruited DRGs operating in Greece were to be headed by KGB agents, but that this was to be concealed from other members of the groups.¹⁰ In 1968 the illegal PAUL was sent to Greece with orders to select “runways” (doroshki) for the landing of airborne Soviet DRGs and bases—“beehives” (ulya)—from which to operate, as well as to check the suitability of those sites identified earlier. “Runway ALFA,” reconnoitered by PAUL, was located in the southern part of the Thessalia plain, about forty kilometers north-west of the town of Lamia. “Runway BETA” was on the north-west of the Thessalia plain, four or five kilometers south of the Kalambaka settlement. The wooded hilly districts of Belasitsa, Piri and Sengal were chosen as areas suitable for smuggling agents and equipment across the Bugarian—Greek border.¹¹

In August 1968 the Bulgarian DS confidently informed the Centre that it was capable of overthrowing the Greek junta with the assistance of one of its agents, whom it identified as the former head of a Greek intelligence agency. The Bulgarian Central Committee had approved the proposed coup d’état in Athens and instructed the leadership of its intelligence service to coordinate plans for it with the KGB and the CPSU Central Committee.¹² The KGB files seen by Mitrokhin do not explain why the Bulgarian proposal was turned down. There were, however, at least three probable reasons. The Centre may well have assessed the risks of failure more highly than the Bulgarians. The Politburo, which at almost the moment the Bulgarian proposal reached it was deciding on the invasion of Czechoslovakia, was doubtless disinclined to give its simultaneous approval to a risky coup attempt in Greece. Further complications were caused by the split in the Greek Communist Party which, after the suppression of the Prague Spring, divided into the pro-Soviet KKE and the Eurocommunist KKE-es. Brillakis (codenamed SEMYON), who had hitherto been one of the KGB’s chief contacts in the underground Greek Party, refused further meetings with the Athens residency in protest at the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.¹³

Though the KGB continued to channel large amounts of money into the KKE,¹⁴ it seems to have made little progress in setting up DRGs (Soviet sabotage and intelligence groups) on Greek soil. The main material successfully smuggled across the Greek—Bulgarian border was not sabotage equipment into Greece but the archives of the KKE which were taken in the opposite direction. Weighing 14 tons, filling 1,598 packages and four crates, guarded by thirty Greek Communists, they were transported from Bulgaria to Romania and thence to the Soviet Union, where they were deposited for safekeeping in the town of Ivanovo.^15″.

«The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of KGB»

Economists and History

«Hopefully nobody who reads this history of economic thought, and therefore comes to understand something of the life and work of the greatest economist of the twentieth century, John Maynard Keynes, will fall victim to the mistakes of nineteenth century economists and recommend fiscal austerity in the midst of a deep recession. Hopefully nobody who reads this history of economic thought, and therefore learns something about how industrious and pecuniary interests conflict from the greatest American economist, Thorstein Veblen, will fail to understand why deregulation of the financial industry creates an accident waiting to happen, and bank bailouts without conditions are a recipe for greater disasters to come. Hopefully nobody who overcomes Cold War prejudice long enough to read something about Karl Marx in this history of economic thought will fail to realize that economic policies are often chosen to serve class interests rather than the social interest. And hopefully those who read this history of economic thought will understand that the virtues of free market fundamentalism have never gone unchallenged, and many who became our most famous economists did so because they alerted us to some new kind of “market failure” requiring some new form of social intervention».

«History of Economic Thought:A Critical Perspective»

Τα ίδια λέγαμε πριν 200 χρόνια

«…αυτό που με ανησυχεί γι’ αυτήν (την Ελλάδα), περισσότερο από κάθε άλλο, σας το εξομολογούμαι, κύριε κόμη, είναι το αυξανόμενο έλλειμμα των οικονομικών της, που το θεωρώ σαν μια αρχή πραγματικής υποδούλωσης, έστω και αν δεν θα είχε το όνομα αυτό. Τα έθνη, όπως και οι ιδιώτες, είναι οι δούλοι των χρεών τους, ουσιαστικά εξαρτημένοι από την κατάσταση της περιουσίας τους, η οποία αποτελεί στον αιώνα μας το ακριβές μέτρο του ήθους των καθώς και της ανεξαρτησίας τους. Ακριβώς απ’ αυτή την προσωρινότητα πρέπει να βγει η Ελλάδα – αλλιώς για 100 χρόνια ακόμη δεν θα είναι ελεύθερη παρά μόνο κατ’ όνομα».

Επιστολή του Αλέξανδρου Στούρτζα, φίλου του Ιωάννη Καποδίστρια, προς τον Κυβερνήτη, με ημερομηνία  6 Νοεμβρίου 1830.

 

Απ. Βακαλόπουλου: «Ιστορία του Νέου Ελληνισμού, Τόμος Η

Οι 10 πρώτοι δημόσιοι υπάλληλοι της Ελλάδας

«Πολλάκις και διενυκτέρευον εν τω γραφείω οι υπάλληλοι…την μεν ημέρα θεραπεύοντες την πείναν δια κολλυρίων, αναβιβαζόμενων φιλοφρόνως εις στα στόματα αυτών υπό της αριστεράς, ενώ η δεξιά εταχυδρόμει ακάματος επί του χάρτου, την δε νύκτα κατακλινόμενοι επί των τραπεζών, αίτινες έως προ μικρού εχρησίμευον αντί γραφείων, και προσκεφάλαια έχοντες πρωτόκολλα ή κατάστιχα ‘ και τούτο ίνα αφυπνισθέντες μετά βραχείαν ανάπαυσιν, και οποίαν ανάπαυσιν! επαναλάβωσι την εργασίαν. Οι δε ούτω διαιτώμενοι είχον και καλώς γεννηθή και καλώς ανατραφή και εν ανέσει βιώσει μέχρι της Επαναστάσεως. Και όμως ουδ’ ηκούσθη ποτέ γογγυσμός ‘ ουδ’ επέλιπεν αυτούς η ιλαρότης».

Ν. Δραγούμης,γραμματέας του Ι. Καποδίστρια – Αναφέρεται στην «Ιστορία του Νέου Ελληνισμού», τόμος Η.

A Rogue Industry

«The evidence is now overwhelming that over the last thirty years, the U.S. financial sector has become a rogue industry. As its wealth and power grew, it subverted America’s political system (including both political parties), government, and academic institutions in order to free itself from regulation. As deregulation progressed, the industry became ever more unethical and dangerous, producing ever larger financial crises and ever more blatant criminality. Since the 1990s, its power has been sufficient to insulate bankers not only from effective regulation but even from criminal law enforcement. The financial sector is now a parasitic and destabilizing industry that constitutes a major drag on American economic growth».

Charles Ferguson:»Predator Nation»

Παρωδία

«Mr. Winston Churchill, now in exile in Portugal, is plotting to overthrow the British Empire and establish Communism in England. By the use of unlimited Russian money he has succeeded in building up a huge Churchillite organisation which includes members of Parliament, factory managers, Roman Catholic bishops and practically the whole of the Primrose League. Almost every day some dastardly act of sabotage is laid bare — sometimes a plot to blow up the House of Lords, sometimes an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the Royal racing-stables. Eighty per cent of the Beefeaters at the Tower are discovered to be agents of the Comintern. A high official at the Post Office admits brazenly to having embezzled postal orders to the tune of £5,000,000, and also to having committed lèse majesté by drawing moustaches on postage stamps. Lord Nuffield, after a 7-hour interrogation by Mr. Norman Birkett, confesses that ever since 1920 he has been fomenting strikes in his own factories. Casual half-inch paras in every issue of the newspapers announce that fifty more Churchillite sheep-stealers have been shot in Westmoreland or that the proprietress of a village shop in the Cotswolds has been transported to Australia for sucking the bullseyes and putting them back in the bottle. And meanwhile the Churchillites (or Churchillite-Harmsworthites as they are called after Lord Rothermere’s execution) never cease from proclaiming that it is they who are the real defenders of Capitalism and that Chamberlain and the rest of his gang are no more than a set of Bolsheviks in disguise».

Ο Geogre Orwell γράφει μια παρωδία της «δίκης» των «Τροτσκιστών». Από το «Why Orwell Matters» του Christopher Hitchens. 

Pithole Creek και Pithole Greek

«Nothing revealed the feverish pitch of speculation better than the strange story of the town of Pithole, on Pithole Creek, some fifteen miles from Titusville. A first well was struck in the dense forest land there in January 1865; by June, there were four flowing wells, producing two thousand barrels per day—one third of the total output of the Oil Regions—and people fought their way in on the roads already clogged with the barrel-laden wagons. «The whole place,» said one visitor, «smells like a corps of soldiers when they have the diarrhea.» The land speculation seemed to know no bounds. One farm that had been virtually worthless a few months earlier was sold for $1.3 million in July 1868, and then resold for two million dollars in September. In that same month, production around Pithole Creek reached six thousand barrels per day—two-thirds of all the production in the Oil Regions. And, by that same September, what had once been an unidentifiable spot in the wilderness had become a town of fifteen thousand people. The New York Herald reported that the principal businesses of Pithole were «liquor and leases»; and The Nation added, «It is safe to assert that there is more vile liquor drunk in this town than in any of its size in the world.» Yet Pithole was already on the road to respectability, with two banks, two telegraph offices, a newspaper, a waterworks, a fire company, scores of boarding houses and businesses, more than fifty hotels—at least three of which were up to elegant metropolitan standards—and a post office that handled more than five thousand letters a day.

But then, a couple of months later, the oil production abruptly gave out—just as quickly as it had begun. To the people of Pithole, this was a calamity, like a biblical plague, and by January 1866, only a year from the first discovery, thousands had fled the town for new hopes and opportunities. The town that had sprung up overnight from the wilderness was totally deserted. Fires ravaged the buildings, and the wooden skeletons that were left were torn down to be used for building again elsewhere or burned as kindling by the farmers in the surrounding hills. Pithole returned to silence and to the wilderness. A parcel of land in Pithole that sold for $2 million in 1868 was auctioned for $4.37 in 1878″.

«The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power» του Daniel Yergin

Οπλοστάσιο

«Εξ' όλων των επί του πλανήτου μας διπόδων ο έλλην στρατιώτης είναι το ολιγαρκέστερον και εντούτοις το δαπανηρότερον ' αρκείται μεν εις άρτον και ελαίας αλλ' ίνα διοικηθεί έχει, φαίνεται, ανάγκην λοχιών και δεκανέων και αξιωματικών πολλαπλάσιων των αλλαχού. Η δε απαραίτητος αυτή ανάγκη καταδικάζει ημάς να μην έχομεν στρατόν… Αν αύριο εκραγεί αληθώς η γενική πυρκαγιά, αντί στρατού θέλομεν παρατάξει τα άρθρα των διακοσίων εφημερίδων μας, τα επιχειρήματα των χιλίων δικηγόρων μας και τα ψηφίσματα των, αγνοώ πόσων, συλλόγων μας».

Εμμ. Ροϊδης